Multi-service business platform system having custom object systems and methods

ABSTRACT

The disclosure is directed to various ways of improving the functioning of computer systems, information networks, data stores, search engine systems and methods, and other advantages. Among other things, provided herein are methods, systems, components, processes, modules, blocks, circuits, sub-systems, articles, and other elements (collectively referred to in some cases as the “platform” or the “system”) that collectively enable, in one or more datastores (e.g., where each datastore may include one or more databases) and systems, the creation, development, maintenance, and use of a set of custom objects (and core objects) for use in a wide range of activities, including sales activities, marketing activities, service activities, content development activities, and others, as well as improved methods and systems for sales, marketing and services that make use of such entity resolution systems and methods as well as custom objects.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application is a continuation of the following U.S. patentapplication, which is incorporated by reference in its entirety: U.S.Ser. No. 17/448,228, filed Sep. 21, 2021 (HUBS-0012-U01).

U.S. Ser. No. 17/448,228 (HUBS-0012-U01) claims priority to U.S.Provisional Application Ser. No. 63/080,900, filed Sep. 21, 2020,entitled MULTI-SERVICE BUSINESS PLATFORM SYSTEM HAVING CUSTOM OBJECTS(HUBS-0007-P01). The above application is hereby incorporated byreference in its entirety as if fully set forth herein.

TECHNICAL FIELD

The present application relates to a multi-client service systemplatform that may be part of a multi-service business platform.

BACKGROUND

Conventional systems for enabling marketing and sales activities for abusiness user do not also respectively enable support and serviceinteractions with customers, notwithstanding that the same individualsare typically involved in all of those activities for a business,transitioning in status from prospect, to customer, to user. Whilemarketing activities, sales activities, and service activities stronglyinfluence the success of each other, businesses are required toundertake complex and time-consuming tasks to obtain relevantinformation for one activity from the others, such as forming queries,using complicated APIs, or otherwise extracting data from separatedatabases, networks, or other information technology systems (some onpremises and others in the cloud), transforming data from one nativeformat to another suitable form for use in a different environment,synchronizing different data sources when changes are made in differentdatabases, normalizing data, cleansing data, and configuring it for use.

Some systems are customer relationship management (CRM) systems that maygenerally provide ability to manage and analyze interactions withcustomers for businesses. For example, these CRM systems may compiledata from various communication channels (e.g., email, phone, chat,content materials, social media, etc.). For example, some CRM systemscan be used to monitor and track CRM standard objects. These CRMstandard objects can include typical business objects such as accounts(e.g., accounts of customers), contacts (e.g., persons associated withaccounts), leads (e.g., prospective customers), and opportunities (e.g.,sales or pending deals).

SUMMARY

According to some example embodiments of the disclosure, a method isdisclosed. The method may be a computer-implemented method for creatinga custom object. The method may include receiving a user request for acustom object creation that may include custom object information. Thecustom object information may be interpreted and converted into customobject metadata. The custom object metadata may be converted intolanguage-independent data creating the custom object. The custom object,in language-independent data form, may be sent to at least one of a userdevice or one or more services of a multi-service business platform, foruse with at least one of a marketing process, a sales process, or acustomer service process. According to some example embodiments, thecustom object information may include at least one of a custom objectname, an object type, a property of the custom object, or an associationof the custom object with another object. In some example embodiments,the custom object information may include an association of the customobject with another second object and the other second object may beanother custom object or a core object. In some example embodiments, theinterpreting of the custom object information may include executing atleast one of business logic or sensible default to interpret the customobject information. In example embodiments, the custom object metadatamay be inserted and stored into a relational-type database. Therelational-type database may be a relational database management system.In some example embodiments, the one or more services of themulti-service business platform may be applied and used with thelanguage-independent data of the custom object. The one or more servicesmay include at least one of workflow automation, reporting, customerrelationship management (CRM)-related actions, analytics, orimport/export actions. In some example embodiments, at least one of themarketing process, the sales process, or the customer service processmay include services providing at least one of customer relationshipmanagement, social media marketing, content management, lead generation,web analytics, search engine optimization, chat, or customer support. Insome example embodiments, the creation of the custom object may includeupdating of one or more multi-tenant data stores that may include atleast one of definitions, properties, values, instances, or associationsfor objects. In some example embodiments, the created custom object mayinclude at least one of a custom identification label, a custom objectname, an object type, or a property of the custom object. In someexample embodiments, at least one association may be created for thecustom object with another second object based on the custom objectinformation. In some example embodiments, the at least one associationmay include at least one of an association identification, anassociation type, a first object identification, a second objectidentification, or a timestamp. The custom object may be directed to thefirst object identification or the second object identification based ona defined relationship between the custom object and the other secondobject.

According to some example embodiments of the disclosure, a system isdisclosed. The system may be a computing system for creating a customobject. The computing system may include a user device for sending auser request for a custom object creation that may include custom objectinformation. The computing system may include a customization system forreceiving the user request. The customization system may be configuredto interpret and convert the custom object information into customobject metadata. The customization system may be configured to convertthe custom object metadata into language-independent data creating thecustom object. The customization system may be configured to send thecustom object in language-independent data form to, at least one of theuser device or one or more services of a multi-service businessplatform, for use with at least one of a marketing process, a salesprocess, or a customer service process.

According to some example embodiments, the system may includemulti-tenant data stores that may include at least one of definitions,properties, values, instances, or associations that may be configured tobe changed by the customization system when the customization systemcreates the custom object. In some example embodiments, the system mayinclude an ontology. The ontology may include the custom object with atleast of one or more other custom objects or one or more core objects.The ontology may also include one or more associations between thecustom object and the at least one of the one or more other customobjects or the one or more core objects. In some example embodiments,the system may include an instance knowledge graph. The instanceknowledge graph may include an instance of the custom object with atleast one of one or more other custom object instances or one or morecore object instances. The instance knowledge graph may also include oneor more association instances between the custom object instance and theat least one of the one or more other custom object instances or the oneor more core object instances. In some example embodiments, thecustomization system may include a form filling service for receivingthe custom object information from the user device. In some exampleembodiments, the customization system may include an object schemaservice for providing an object definition application programminginterface (API) for receiving the custom object information from theuser device. In some example embodiments, the customization system mayinclude at least one of business logic or sensible default to interpretthe custom object information. In some example embodiments, thecustomization system may include a common data format conversion serviceto assist with synchronization and integration of the custom objectwithin the multi-service business platform for use with the at least oneof the marketing process, the sales process, or the customer serviceprocess.

According to some example embodiments of the disclosure, anon-transitory computer readable storage medium is disclosed. Thecomputer readable storage medium may have instructions stored thereonwhich, when executed across one or more processors, may cause at least aportion of the one or more processors to perform operations. Theoperations may include receiving a user request for a custom objectcreation that may include custom object information. The custom objectinformation may be interpreted and converted into custom objectmetadata. The custom object metadata may be converted intolanguage-independent data creating the custom object. The custom objectin language-independent data form may be sent to, a user device or oneor more services of a multi-service business platform, for use with atleast one of a marketing process, a sales process, or a customer serviceprocess.

According to some example embodiments of the disclosure, the creation ofthe custom object may include updating of one or more multi-tenant datastores including at least one of definitions, properties, values,instances, or associations for objects.

A more complete understanding of the disclosure will be appreciated fromthe description and accompanying drawings and the claims, which follow.

These and other systems, methods, objects, features, and advantages ofthe disclosure will be apparent to those skilled in the art from thefollowing detailed description of the preferred embodiment and thedrawings.

All documents mentioned herein are hereby incorporated in their entiretyby reference. References to items in the singular should be understoodto include items in the plural, and vice versa, unless explicitly statedotherwise or clear from the text. Grammatical conjunctions are intendedto express any and all disjunctive and conjunctive combinations ofconjoined clauses, sentences, words, and the like, unless otherwisestated or clear from the context.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE FIGURES

The disclosure and the following detailed description of certainembodiments thereof may be understood by reference to the followingfigures:

FIG. 1 depicts a high-level flow in which a content platform is used toprocess online content, identify a cluster of semantically relevanttopics and produce generated online presence content involving thesemantically relevant topics according to one or more embodiments of thedisclosure.

FIG. 2 provides a functional block diagram of certain components andelements of a content development platform, including elements forextracting key phrases from a primary online content object, a contentcluster data store for storing clusters of topics and a contentdevelopment and management application having a user interface fordeveloping content according to one or more embodiments of thedisclosure.

FIGS. 3, 4, and 5 show examples of user interface elements forpresenting suggested topics and related information according to one ormore embodiments of the disclosure.

FIG. 6 provides a functional block diagram of certain components andelements of a content development platform, including integration of acustomer relationship management system with other elements of theplatform according to one or more embodiments of the disclosure.

FIG. 7 provides a detailed functional block diagram of components andelements of a content development platform according to one or moreembodiments of the disclosure.

FIG. 8 illustrates a user interface for reporting information relatingto online content generated using the content development and managementplatform according to one or more embodiments of the disclosure.

FIG. 9 depicts a user interface in which activity resulting from the useof the platform is reported to a marketer or other user according to oneor more embodiments of the disclosure.

FIG. 10 illustrates an example environment of a directed content systemaccording to one or more embodiments of the disclosure.

FIG. 11 depicts an example of the crawling system and the informationextraction system maintaining a knowledge graph according to one or moreembodiments of the disclosure.

FIG. 12 depicts a visual representation of a portion of an exampleknowledge graph representation according to one or more embodiments ofthe disclosure.

FIG. 13 illustrates an example configuration of the lead scoring systemand the content generation system for identifying intended recipients ofmessages and generating personalized messages for the one or moreintended recipients.

FIG. 14 illustrates an example configuration of the directed contentsystem according to one or more embodiments of the disclosure.

FIG. 15 illustrates a method for generating personalized messages onbehalf of a user according to one or more embodiments of the disclosure.

FIG. 16 illustrates an example environment of a multi-client servicesystem platform according to one or more embodiments of the disclosure.

FIG. 17A illustrates an example of a contact database object accordingto one or more embodiments of the disclosure.

FIG. 17B illustrates an example of a client database object according toone or more embodiments of the disclosure.

FIG. 17C illustrates an example of a ticket database object according toone or more embodiments of the disclosure.

FIG. 18 depicts a visual representation of a portion of an exampleknowledge graph representation according to one or more embodiments ofthe disclosure.

FIG. 19 illustrates an example of a multi-client service system platformproviding service systems on behalf of two independent clients accordingto one or more embodiments of the disclosure.

FIG. 20 is a flow chart illustrating a set of operations of a method fordeploying a client-specific service system.

FIG. 21 is a screenshot showing an example GUI of a service system forshowing a user a status of a ticket according to one or more embodimentsof the disclosure.

FIG. 22 is a screenshot showing an example GUI of a service system forshowing a user data surrounding an issued ticket, including aconversation with a contact, according to one or more embodiments of thedisclosure.

FIG. 23 is a screenshot showing an example GUI of a service system forshowing a user a ticket overview of multiple tickets of various contactsaccording to one or more embodiments of the disclosure.

FIG. 24 is a screenshot showing an example GUI of a service system forshowing a user a feedback overview of multiple contacts of a clientaccording to one or more embodiments of the disclosure.

FIG. 25 is a screenshot showing an example GUI of a service system forshowing a user feedback received from a user, including a feedbacktimeline, according to one or more embodiments of the disclosure.

FIG. 26 is a screenshot showing an example GUI of a service system forshowing a user feedback received from a user, including a feedbacktimeline, according to one or more embodiments of the disclosure.

FIGS. 27-35 are screenshots of example GUIs that allow a usercorresponding to a client to customize different aspects of the client'srespective feedback system, according to one or more embodiments of thedisclosure.

FIG. 36 is a screenshot of an example of a GUI that displays a breakdownof the net promoter scores of the contacts of a particular clientaccording to one or more embodiments of the disclosure.

FIGS. 37 and 38 are screenshots of an example GUI for uploading contentto a service platform for inclusion in a knowledge graph according toone or more embodiments of the disclosure.

FIG. 39 is a screenshot of an example GUI for viewing analytics datarelated to the uploaded content according to one or more embodiments ofthe disclosure.

FIGS. 40-44 are screenshots of an example GUI that allows a user tocustomize the service workflow of a client according to one or moreembodiments of the disclosure.

FIG. 45 is an example environment view of a multi-service businessplatform communicating with various systems, devices, and data sourcesaccording to one or more embodiments of the disclosure.

FIG. 46 is an example detailed view of a customization system of themulti-service business platform according to one or more embodiments ofthe disclosure.

FIG. 47 is an example detailed view of a custom object and associationsbetween the custom object and other objects according to one or moreembodiments of the disclosure.

FIG. 48 depicts a visual representation of a portion of an exampleinstance knowledge graph representation according to one or moreembodiments of the disclosure.

FIGS. 49A-49G are screenshots of an example graphical user interface(GUI) that allows a user to create and use custom objects with themulti-service business platform according to one or more embodiments ofthe disclosure.

FIG. 50 is a flow chart illustrating a set of operations of a method forusing the customization system of the multi-service business platformaccording to one or more embodiments of the disclosure.

FIG. 51 is a block diagram of an example entity resolution systemembodiment of entity deduplication methods and systems according to oneor more embodiments of the disclosure.

FIG. 52 is a block diagram of an example entity deduplication trainingprocess according to one or more embodiments of the disclosure.

FIG. 53 is a flow chart of an example entity deduplication trainingprocess according to one or more embodiments of the disclosure.

FIG. 54 is a block and data flow diagram of a training embodiment forentity deduplication according to one or more embodiments of thedisclosure.

FIG. 55 is a portion of a system for entity deduplication showingbackend functions that facilitate refining a neural network generatedprobability of entity pairs being duplicates according to one or moreembodiments of the disclosure.

FIG. 56 is a flow chart of a first embodiment of an artificialintelligence-based deduplication process where pairs of entities areprocessed singly according to one or more embodiments of the disclosure.

FIG. 57 is a diagram of entity feature-vector and companion matricesaccording to one or more embodiments of the disclosure.

FIG. 58 is a flow chart of an artificial intelligence-baseddeduplication process where an entire set of entities are processedconcurrently according to one or more embodiments of the disclosure.

FIG. 59 is a flow chart of an artificial intelligence-baseddeduplication where artificial intelligence is used in entityduplication determination refinement actions according to one or moreembodiments of the disclosure.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION Multi-Service Business Platform

The complex, difficult, and time-consuming tasks described in thedisclosure may tend to deter use of information from one activity whenconducting the other, except in a somewhat ad hoc fashion. For example,a person providing service to a customer may not know what product thecustomer has purchased, leading to delay, confusion, and frustration forthe service person and the customer. A need exists for the improvedmethods and systems provided herein that enable, in a single databaseand system, the development and maintenance of a set of universalcontact objects that relate to the contacts of a business and that haveattributes that enable use for a wide range of activities, includingsales activities, marketing activities, service activities, contentdevelopment activities, and others, as well as for improved methods andsystems for sales, marketing, and services that make use of suchuniversal contact objects.

Further, a need exists for added and improved customizability with CRMsystems and other-related systems for marketing and sales activities.While the CRM systems may use standard objects (e.g., accounts,contacts, leads, and opportunities), there is a need for the creationand use of custom objects. Specifically, there is a need for thesesystems to provide an ability for users to create custom objectsrelevant to the users' businesses. Also, there is a need for thesesystems to apply various types of features (e.g., apply processes suchas analysis, reporting, workflows) to these custom objects.

In example embodiments, a method and system for creating custom objectsmay be offered for addressing need for customizability with CRM systemsand other-related systems for marketing and sales activities. Forexample, a multi-service business platform (e.g., framework) may includea customization system that may be used to create custom objects. Themulti-service business platform may be configured to provide processesrelated to marketing, sales, and/or customer service. The multi-servicebusiness platform may include a database structure that already haspreset or fixed core objects (e.g., contact objects, company objects,deals objects, ticket objects as described in more detail below).However, the ability to create custom objects (e.g., using thecustomization system) allows for users to have the flexibility ofcreating any type of custom object (e.g., arbitrary objects) relevant totheir business without being restricted to the fixed core objects. Thisallows for users to customize usage of the multi-service businessplatform more closely to their business with regard to marketing, sales,and/or customer service. This also may allow for improved and fasterdevelopment of new custom object types by users and/or developers of themulti-service business platform. Various services of the multi-servicebusiness platform may then be applied and/or used with the customobjects. For example, some services that may be applied include workflowautomation (e.g., automate based on changes to core objects and based onadded custom objects or changes to custom objects and/or core objects),reporting (e.g., report on any custom objects along with core objects),CRM-related actions, analytics (e.g., get analytics for custom objects),import/export, and/or other actions. For example, other actions mayinclude filtering used to search, filter, and list contact objects thatmay be used with custom objects and/or create lists for custom objects.In example embodiments, other actions may include, but are not limitedto, reporting, permissioning, auditing, user-defined calculations,and/or aggregations. Machine learning that may have been used with coreobjects may also be applied to the custom objects. The multi-servicebusiness platform may include a synchronization system that maysynchronize some arbitrary custom objects outside the platform toobjects in the platform. In summary, in example embodiments, themulti-service business platform may act as an arbitrary platform thatmay act on arbitrary custom objects that may be used with variousservices (e.g., used with arbitrary actions and synced to arbitrarysystems of the platform) thereby benefiting from these variouscapabilities.

In general, users may identify specific object types or custom objecttypes that may have been created. The multi-service business platform(e.g., particularly services of the platform) may allow for use ofcreated custom objects from users. Users may choose to create any customobject type that they prefer (e.g., a customer may create definitiontypes and values that may be stored with custom objects and/or instancesof custom objects). The multi-service business platform may allow usersto dynamically add these unique custom object types with minimaldevelopment effort needed from users and the platform itself.

Embodiments of the disclosure are directed to computers, computersystems, networks and data storage arrangements comprising digitallyencoded information and machine-readable instructions. The systems areconfigured and arranged so as to accomplish the present methods,including by transforming given inputs according to instructions toyield new and useful outputs determining behaviors and physicaloutcomes. Users of the present system and method will gain new andcommercially significant abilities to convey ideas and to promote,create, sell, and control articles of manufacture, goods, and otherproducts. The machinery in which the present system and method areimplemented will therefore comprise novel and useful devices andarchitectures of computing and processing equipment for achieving thepresent objectives.

With reference to FIG. 1, in embodiments of the disclosure, a platformis provided having a variety of methods, systems, components, services,interfaces, processes, components, data structures, and other elements(collectively referred to as the “content development platform 100”except where context indicates otherwise), which enable automateddevelopment, deployment, and management of content, typically for anenterprise, that is adapted to support a variety of enterprisefunctions, including marketing strategy and communications, websitedevelopment, search engine optimization, sales force management,electronic commerce, social networking, and others. Among otherbenefits, the content development platform 100 uses a range of automatedprocesses to extract and analyze existing online content of anenterprise, parse and analyze the content, and develop a cluster ofadditional content that is highly relevant to the enterprise, withoutreliance on conventional keyword-based techniques. Referring to FIG. 1,the content development platform 100 may generally facilitate processingof a primary online content object 102, such as a main web page of anenterprise, to establish a topic cluster 168 of topics that are relevantto one or more core topics 106 that are found in or closely related tothe content of the primary online content object 102, such as based onsemantic similarity of the topics in the topic cluster 168, includingcore topics 106, to content within the primary online content object102. The platform 100 may further enable generation of generated onlinepresence content 160, such as reflecting various topics in the topiccluster 168, for use by marketers, salespeople, and other writers, orcontent creators on behalf of the enterprise.

In embodiments, the content development platform 100 includes methodsand systems for generating a cluster of correlated content from theprimary online content object 102. In embodiments, the primary onlinecontent object 102 is a web page of an enterprise. In embodiments, theprimary online content object 102 is a social media page of anenterprise. In the embodiments described throughout this disclosure, themain web page of an enterprise, or of a business unit of an enterprise,is provided as an example of a primary online content object 102 and insome cases herein is described as a “pillar” of content, reflecting thatthe web page is an important driver of business for the enterprise, suchas for delivering marketing messages, managing public relations,attracting talent, and routing or orienting customers to relevantproducts and other information. References to a web page or the likeherein should be understood to apply to other types of primary onlinecontent objects 102, except where context indicates otherwise. Anobjective of the content development platform 100 may be to drivetraffic to a targeted web page, in particular by increasing thelikelihood that the web page may be found in search engines, or by usersfollowing links to the web page that may be contained in other content,such as content developed using the content development platform 100.

In an aspect, the present systems, data configuration architectures andmethods allow an improvement over conventional online content generationschemes. As stated before, traditional online promotional content reliedon key word placement and on sympathetic authorship of a main subject(e.g., a website) and corresponding secondary publications (e.g., blogsand sub-topical content related to the website), which methods rely onknown objective and absolute ranking criteria to successfully promoteand rank the website and sub-topical content. In an increasinglysubjective, personalized and context-sensitive search environment, thepresent systems and methods develop canonical value around a primaryonline content object such as a website. In an aspect, a cluster ofsupportive and correlated content is intelligently generated orindicated so as to optimize and promote the online work product of apromoter (e.g., in support of an agenda or marketing effort). In anexample, large numbers of online pages are taken as inputs to thepresent system and method (e.g., using a crawling, parallel orsequential page processing machine and software).

As shown in simplified FIG. 1, a “core topic” 106 or main subject for apromotional or marketing effort, related to one or more topics, phrases,or the like extracted based on the methods and systems described hereinfrom a primary online content object 102, may be linked to a pluralityof supporting and related other topics, such as sub-topics. The coretopic 106 may comprise, for example, a canonical source of informationon that general subject matter, and preferably be a subject supportingor justifying links with other information on the general topic of aprimary online content object 102. In embodiments, visitors to a sitewhere a generated online content 160 is located can start at ahyperlinked sub-topic of content and be directed to the core topic 106within a page, such as a page linked to a primary online content object102 or to the primary online content object 102 itself. In an example,the core topic 106 can be linked to several (e.g., three to eight, ormore) sub-topics. A recommendation or suggestion tool, to be describedfurther below, can recommend or suggest sub-topics, or conversely, itcan dissuade or suggest avoidance of sub-topics based on automatedlogic, which can be enabled by a machine learned process. As will bediscussed herein, a content strategy may be employed in developing theoverall family of linked content, and the content strategy may supersedeconventional key word based strategies according to some or allembodiments hereof.

In embodiments, the system and method analyze, store and processinformation available from a crawling step, including for a givenpromoter's website (e.g., one having a plurality of online pages), so asto determine a salient subject matter and potential sub-topics relatedto the subject matter of the site. Associations derived from thisprocessing and analysis are stored and further used in subsequentmachine learning based analyses of other sites. Data derived from theanalysis and storage of the above pages, content and extracted analyticsmay be organized in an electronic data store, which is preferably alarge aggregated database and which may be organized, for example, usingMYSQL™ or a similar format.

FIG. 2 provides a detailed functional block diagram of certaincomponents and elements of a content development platform, includingelements for extracting key phrases from a primary online contentobject, a content cluster data store 132 that stores clusters of topics,and a content development and management application 150 having a userinterface that allows users to develop content. Within the platform 100,key phrases 112 are extracted from the primary online content object 102and are processed, such as using a variety of models 118, resulting inone or more content clusters 130 that are stored in a content clusterdata store 132. The clusters may comprise the topic clusters 168 thatare semantically relevant to core topics reflected in the primary onlinecontent object 102, as indicated by the key phrases. The models 118,which may access a corpus of content extracted by crawling a relevantset of pages on the Internet, are applied to the key phrases 112 toestablish the clusters, which arrange topics around a core topic basedon semantic similarity. From the content clusters 130 a suggestiongenerator 134 may generate one or more suggested topics 138, which maybe presented in a user interface 152 of a content development managementapplication 150 within which an agent of an enterprise, such as amarketer, a salesperson, or the like may view the suggested topic 138and relevant information about it (such as indicators of its similarityor relevancy as described elsewhere herein) and create content, such asweb pages, emails, customer chats, and other generated online presencecontent 160 on behalf of the enterprise. Within the interface 152, theresulting generated online presence content 160 may be linked to theprimary online content object 102, such that the primary online contentobject 102 and one or more generated online presence objects 160 form acluster of semantically related content, such that visitors to any oneof the objects 102, 160 may be driven, including by the links, to theother objects 102, 160. In particular, the platform 100 enables thedriving of viewers who are interested in the topics that differentiatethe enterprise to the online presence content, such as the main webpages, of the enterprise. Performance of the topics may be tracked, suchas in a reporting and analytics system 180, such that performance-basedsuggestions may be provided by the suggestion generator 134, such as bysuggesting more suggested topics 138 that are similar to ones that havedriven increases in traffic to the primary online content object 102.

The system and method are then capable of projection of the crawled,stored and processed information, using the present processing hardware,networking and computing infrastructure so as to generate speciallyformatted vectors, e.g., a single vector or multiple vectors. The vectoror vectors may be generated according to a Word2vec model used toproduce word embeddings in a multi-layer neural network or similararrangement. Those skilled in the art may appreciate that furtherreconstruction of linguistic contexts of words are possible by taking abody of content (e.g., language words) to generate such vector(s) in asuitable vector space. Said vectors may further indicate usefulassociations of words and topical information based on their proximityto one another in said vector space. Vectors based on other contentinformation (e.g., phrases or documents, which can be referred to asPhrase2vec or Document2vec herein) may also be employed in someembodiments. Documents or pages having similar semantic meaning would beconceptually proximal to one another according to the present model. Inthis way, new terms or phrases or documents may be compared againstknown data in the data store of the system and generate a similarity,relevance, or nearness quantitative metric. Cosine similarity or othermethods can be employed as part of this nearness determination. Thesimilarity may be translated into a corresponding score in someembodiments. In other aspects, said score may be used as an input toanother process or another optional part of the present system. In yetother aspects, the output may be presented in a user interface presentedto a human or machine. The score can further be presented as a“relevance” metric. Human-readable suggestions may be automaticallygenerated by the system and method and provided as outputs, output data,or output signals in a processor-driven environment such as a moderncomputing architecture. The suggestions may in some aspects provide acontent context model for guiding promoters (e.g., marketers) towards abest choice of topical content to prepare and put up on their websites,including suitable and relevant recommendations for work products suchas articles and blog posts and social media materials that would promotethe promoters' main topics or subjects of interest or sell the productsand services of the marketers using the system and method.

In an aspect, the present system and method allow for effectiverecommendations to promoters that improve the link structure betweenexisting content materials such as online pages, articles and posts. Inanother aspect, this allows for better targeting of efforts of apromoter based on the desired audience of the efforts, including largegroups, small groups or even individuals.

Implementations of the present system and method can vary as would beappreciated by those skilled in the art. For example, the system andmethod can be used to create a content strategy tool using processinghardware and special machine-readable instructions executing thereon.Consider as a simple illustrative example that a promoter desires tobest market a fitness product, service or informational topic. This canbe considered as a primary or “core topic” about which other secondarytopics can be generated, which are in turn coupled to or related to thecore topic. For example, weightlifting, dieting, exercise or othersecondary topics may be determined to have a favorable context-basedrelevance to the core topic. Specific secondary sub-topics aboutweightlifting routines, entitled, e.g., ‘Best weightlifting routines formen’ or ‘How to improve your training form’ (and so on) may be eachturned into a blog post that links back to the core topic web page.

In some embodiments, when a user uses the content strategy tool of thepresent system and method the user may be prompted to select or enter acore (primary) topic based on the user's own knowledge or the user'sfield of business. The tool may use this, along with a large amount ofcrawled online content that was analyzed, or along with extractedinformation resulting from such crawling of online content and priorstored search criteria and results, which is now context-based, tovalidate a topic against various criteria.

In an example, topics are suggested (or entered topics are rated) basedon the topics' competitiveness, popularity, and/or relevance. Thoseskilled in the art may appreciate other similar criteria which can beused as metrics in the suggestion or evaluation of a topic.

Competitiveness can comprise a measure of how likely a domain (Webdomain) would be ranked on “Page 1” for a particular term or phrase. Thelower the percentile ranking, the more difficult it is to rank for thatterm or phrase (e.g., as determined by a MozRank™ provided by Moz™indicating a site's authority).

Popularity as a metric is a general measure of a term or phrase'speriodic (e.g., monthly) search volume from various major searchengines. The greater this percentage, the more popular the term orphrase is.

Relevance as a metric generally indicates how close a term or phrase isto other content put up on the user's site or domain. The lower therelevance, the further away the term or phrase is from what the coretopic of the site or domain is. This can be automatically determined bya crawler that crawls the site or domain to determine its main or coretopic of interest to consumers. If relevance is offered as a service byembodiments of the present system and method a score can be presentedthrough a user or machine interface indicating how relevant the newinput text is to an existing content pool.

Timeliness of the content is another aspect that could be used to drivecontent suggestions or ratings with respect to a core topic. Forexample, a recent-ness (recency) metric may be used in addition to thosegiven above for the sake of illustration of embodiments of the systemand method.

Therefore, analysis and presentation of information indicating crossrelationships between topics becomes effective under the present scheme.In embodiments, these principles may be additionally or alternativelyapplied to email marketing or promotional campaigns to aid in decisionmaking as to the content of emails sent to respective recipients so asto maximally engage the recipients in the given promotion.

Other possible features include question classification; documentretrieval; passage retrieval; answer processing; and factoid questionanswering.

Note that the present concepts can be carried across languages insofaras an aspect hereof provides for manual or automated translation from afirst language to a second language, and that inputs, results andoutputs of the system can be processed in one or another language, or ina plurality of languages as desired.

FIG. 3, FIG. 4, and FIG. 5 are illustrative depictions of exemplarysimplified aspects of the present system, method and tools. Thesedepictions are not meant to be exhaustive or limiting, but are merelyexamples of how some features could be provided to a user of the systemand method.

Some embodiments hereof employ a latent semantic analysis (LSA) model,encoded using data in a data store and programmed instructions and/orprocessing circuitry to generate an output comprising an associationbetween various content by the promoter user of the system and method.LSA is being applied here to analyze relationships between a (large) setof documents and the data contained therein. In one embodiment machinelearning may be used to develop said association output or outputs.

FIG. 6 provides a functional block diagram of certain additionaloptional components and elements of the content development platform100, including integration of a customer relationship management system158 with other elements of the platform according to one or moreembodiments of the disclosure. In embodiments, the generated onlinecontent object 160 may comprise messaging content for a customerinteraction that is managed via a customer relationship managementsystem 158. In embodiments, the customer relationship management system158 may include one or more customer data records 164, such asreflecting data on groups of customers or individual customers,including demographic data, geographic data, psychographic data, datarelating to one or more transactions, data indicating topics of interestto the customers, data relating to conversations between agents of theenterprise and the customers, data indicating past purchases, interestin particular products, brands, or categories, and other customerrelationship data. The customer data records 164 may be used by theplatform 100 to provide additional suggested topics 138, to select amongsuggested topics 138, to modify suggested topics 138, or the like. Inembodiments, the CRM system 158 may support interactions with acustomer, such as through a customer chat 184, which in embodiments maybe edited in the user interface 152 of the content development andmanagement application 150, such as to allow a writer, such as an insidesalesperson or marketer who is engaging in a customer chat 184 with thecustomer to see suggested topics 138 that may be of interest to thecustomer, such as based on the customer data records 164 and based onrelevancy of the topics to the main differentiators of the enterprise.In embodiments, a conversational agent 182 may be provided within orintegrated with the platform 100, such as for automating one or moreconversations between the enterprise and a customer. The conversationalagent 182 may take suggested topics from the suggestion generator 134 tofacilitate initiation of conversations with customers around topics thatdifferentiate the enterprise, such as topics that are semanticallyrelevant to key phrases found in the primary online content object 102.In embodiments, the conversational agent 182 may populate the customerchat 184 in the user interface 152, such as providing seed or draftcontent that a writer for the enterprise can edit.

FIG. 7 provides a detailed functional block diagram of components andelements of a content development platform according to one or moreembodiments of the disclosure. In embodiments, the methods and systemsmay include an automated crawler 104 that crawls the primary onlinecontent object 102 and storing a set of results from the crawling in adata storage facility 108. In embodiments, the data storage facility isa cloud-based storage facility, such as a simple storage facility (e.g.,an S3™ bucket provided by Amazon™), and/or on a web service platform(e.g., the Amazon Web Services™ (AWS) platform). In embodiments, thedata storage facility is a distributed data storage facility. Inembodiments, the automated crawler 104 crawls one or more domainsassociated with an enterprise customers' content (e.g., the customer'sportal, main web page, or the like) as the primary online content object102 to identify topics already in use on those sites and stores thepages in a data storage facility (e.g., S3™ storage), with metadata in adatabase (e.g., a MySQL™ database). The content development platform 100may include a parser 110 that parses the stored content from thecrawling activity of the automated crawler 104 and generates a pluralityof the key phrases 112 and a content corpus 114 from the primary onlinecontent object 102. The content development platform 100 may include,use, or integrate with one or more of a plurality of models 118 forprocessing at least one of the key phrases 112 and the corpus 114.

In embodiments, the models 118 may include one or more of a word2vecmodel 120, a doc2vec model 122, a latent semantic analysis (LSA)extraction model, an LSA model 124, and a key phrase logistic regressionmodel 128, wherein the processing results in a plurality of the contentclusters 130 representing topics within the primary online contentobject 102. In embodiments, the platform 100 may take content for theprimary online content object 102, such as a website, and extract anumber of phrases, such as a number of co-located phrases, based onprocessing the n-grams present in the content (e.g., unigrams, bi-grams,tri-grams, tetra-grams, and so on), which may in the LSA model 124, beranked based on the extent of presence in the content and based on avocabulary that is more broadly used across a more general body ofcontent, such as a broad set of Internet content. This provides a vectorrepresentation of a website within the LSA model 124. Based on crawlingwith the automatic crawler 104 of over 619 million pages on the publicinternet (seeking to ignore ignoring those pages that are light oncontent), an LSA model 124 has been trained using machine learning,using a training set of more than 250 million pages, such that the LSAmodel 124 is trained to understand associations between elements ofcontent.

In embodiments, the one or more models 118 include the word2vec model120 or other models (e.g., doc2vec 122 or phrase2vec) that projectscrawled-domain primary online object content 102, such as fromcustomers' domains, into a single vector. In embodiments, the vectorspace is such that documents that contain similar semantic meaning areclose together. The application of the word2vec model 120 and thedoc2vec model 122 to the vector representation of primary online contentobject 102 (e.g., website) to draw vectors may result in acontent-context model based on co-located phrases. This allows new termsto be compared against that content context database to determine hownear it is to the enterprise's existing primary online content objects102 (e.g., webpages), such as using cosine similarity. That similaritymay then be converted into a score and displayed through the UI, such asdisplaying it as a “Relevancy” score. Ultimately, the content contextmodel may be used to give recommendations and guidance for howindividuals can choose good topics to write about, improve the linkstructure of existing content, and target marketing and other effortsbased on their audiences' individual topic groups of interest. Inembodiments, the plurality of models 118 used by the platform maycomprise other forms of model for clustering documents and other contentbased on similarity, such as a latent semantic indexing model, aprincipal component analysis model, or the like. In embodiments, othersimilar models may be used, such as a phrase2vec model, or the like.

An objective of the various models 118 is to enable clustering ofcontent, or “topic clusters 168” around relevant key phrases, where thetopic clusters 168 include semantically similar words and phrases(rather than simply linking content elements that share exactly matchingkeywords). Semantic similarity can be determined by calculating vectorsimilarity around key phrases appearing in two elements of content. Inembodiments, topic clusters may be automatically clustered, such as byan auto-clustering engine 172 that manages a set of software jobs thattake web pages from the primary online content object 102, use a model118, such as the LSA model 124 to turn the primary online content object102 into a vector representation, project the vector representation onto a space (e.g., a two-dimensional space), perform an affinitypropagation that seeks to find natural groupings among the vectors(representing clusters of ideas within the content), and show thegroupings as clusters of content. Once groups are created, a reviewer,such as a marketer or other content developer, can select one or more“centers” within the clusters, such as recognizing a core topic withinthe marketer's “pillar” content (such as a main web page), which maycorrespond to the primary online content object 102. Nodes in thecluster that are in close proximity to the identified centers mayrepresent good additional topics about which to develop content or towhich to establish links; for example, topic clusters can suggest anappropriate link structure among content objects managed by anenterprise and with external content objects, such as third-partyobjects, where the link structure is based on building an understandingof a semantic organization of a cluster of topics and mirroring theother content and architecture of links surrounding a primary onlinecontent object 102 based on the semantic organization.

The content development platform 100 may include a content cluster datastore 132 for storing the content clusters 130. The content cluster datastore 132 may comprise a MySQL™ database or other type of database. Thecontent cluster data store 132 may store mathematical relationships,based on the various models 118, between content objects, such as theprimary online content object 102 and various other content objects ortopics, which, among other things, may be used to determine what pagesshould be in the same cluster of pages (and accordingly should be linkedto each other). In embodiments, clusters are based on matching semanticsbetween phrases, not just matching exact phrases. Thus, new topics canbe discovered by observing topics or subtopics within semanticallysimilar content objects in a cluster that are not already covered in aprimary online content object 102. In embodiments, an auto-discoveryengine 170 may process a set of topics in a cluster to automaticallydiscover additional topics that may be of relevance to partiesinterested in the content of the primary online content object 102.

In embodiments, topics within a cluster in the content cluster datastore 132 may be associated with a relevancy score 174 (built from themodels 118), which in embodiments may be normalized to a single numberthat represents the calculated extent of semantic similarity of adifferent topic to the core topic (e.g., the center of a cluster, suchas reflecting the core topic of the primary online content object 102,such as a main web page of an enterprise). The relevancy score 174 maybe used to facilitate recommendations or suggestions about additionaltopics within a cluster that may be relevant for content development.

The content development platform may include a suggestion generator 134for generating, using output from at least one of the models, asuggested topic 138 that is similar to at least one topic among thecontent clusters and for storing the suggested topic 138 and informationregarding the similarity of the suggested topic 138 to at least onecontent of the clusters 130 in the content cluster data store 132.Suggested topics 138 may include sub-topic suggestions, suggestions foradditional core topics and the like, each based on semantic similarity(such as using a relevancy score 174 or similar calculation) to contentin the primary online content object 102, such as content identified asbeing at the center of a cluster of topics. Suggestions may be generatedby using the keyphrase logistic regression model 128 on the primaryonline content object 102, which, among other things, determines, for agiven phrase that is similar to the content in a cluster, how relativelyunique the phrase is relative to a wider body of content, such as all ofthe websites that have been crawled across the broader Internet. Thus,through a combination of identifying semantically similar topics in acluster (e.g., using the word2vec model 120, doc2vec model 122, and LSAmodel 124) and identifying which of those are relatively differentiated(using the keyphrase logistic regression model 128), a set of highlyrelevant, well differentiated topics may be generated, which thesuggestion generator 134 may process for production of one or moresuggested topics 138.

In embodiments, the parser 110 uses a parsing machine learning system140 to parse the crawled content. In embodiments, the parsing machinelearning system 140 iteratively applies a set of weights to input data,wherein the weights are adjusted based on a parameter of success,wherein the parameter of success is based on the success of suggestedtopics 138 in the online presence of an enterprise. In embodiments, themachine learning system is provided with a parser training data set 142that is created based on human analysis of the crawled content.

In embodiments, the platform 100 uses a clustering machine learningsystem 144 to cluster content into the content clusters 130. Inembodiments, the clustering machine learning system 144 iterativelyapplies a set of weights to input data, wherein the weights are adjustedbased on a parameter of success and the parameter of success is based onthe success of suggested topics in the online presence of an enterprise.In embodiments, the clustering machine learning system 144 is providedwith a training data set that is created based on human clustering of aset of content topics.

In embodiments, the suggestion generator 134 uses a suggestion machinelearning system 148 to suggest topics. In embodiments, the suggestionmachine learning system 148 iteratively applies a set of weights toinput data, wherein the weights are adjusted based on a parameter ofsuccess, and the parameter of success is based on the success ofsuggested topics in the online presence of an enterprise. Inembodiments, the suggestion machine learning system 148 is provided witha training data set that is created based on human creation of a set ofsuggested topics.

In embodiments, the methods and systems disclosed herein may furtherinclude a content development and management application 150 fordeveloping a strategy for development of online presence content, theapplication 150 accessing the content cluster data store 132 and havinga set of tools for exploring and selecting suggested topics 138 foronline presence content generation. In embodiments, the application 150provides a list of suggested topics 138 that are of highest semanticrelevance for an enterprise based on the parsing of the primary onlinecontent object. In embodiments, the methods and systems may furtherinclude a user interface 152 of the application 150 that presents asuggestion, wherein the generated suggestion is presented with anindicator of the similarity 154 of the suggested topic 138 to a topic inthe content clusters 130 as calculated by at least one of the models118.

In embodiments, the content development and management application 150may include a cluster user interface 178 portion of the user interface152 in which, after the primary online content object 102 has beenbrought on board to the content development platform 100, a cluster oflinked topics can be observed, including core topics in the primaryonline content object 102 and various related topics. The cluster userinterface 178 may allow a user, such as a sales or marketingprofessional, to explore a set of topics (e.g., topics that are highlyrelevant to a brand of the enterprise and related topics) which, inembodiments, may be presented with a relevancy score 174 or othermeasures of similarity, as well as with other information, such assearch volume information and the like. In embodiments, the cluster userinterface 178 or other portion of the user interface 152 may allow auser to select and attach one or more topics or content objects, such asindicating which topics should be considered at the core for theenterprise, for a brand, or for a particular project. Thus, the clusterframework embodied in the cluster user interface 178 allows a party toframe the context of what topics the enterprise wishes to be known foronline (such as for the enterprise as a whole or for a brand of theenterprise).

The content development and management application 150 may comprise acontent strategy tool that encourages users to structure content inclusters based on the notion that topics are increasingly more relevantthan keywords, so that enterprises should focus on owning a contenttopic, rather than going after individual keywords. Each topic cluster168 may have a “core topic,” such as implemented as a web page on thatcore topic. For example, on a personal trainer's website, the core topicmight be “weightlifting.” Around those core topics 106 should besubtopics (in this example, this might include things like “bestweightlifting routines” or “how to improve your weightlifting form”),each of which should be made into a blog post that links back to thecore topic page.

When users use the content development and management application 150,or content strategy tool, the user may be prompted to enter a topicbased on the user's own knowledge of the enterprise. The contentdevelopment and management application 150 or tool may also useinformation gleaned by crawling domains of the enterprise with theautomated crawler 104, such as to identify existing topic clusters ontheir site (i.e., the primary online content object 102). For eachidentified core topic, the topic may be validated based on one or moremetrics or criteria, (e.g., competitiveness, popularity, relevancy, orthe like). In embodiments, a relevancy metric may be determined based oncosine similarity between a topic and the core topic, and/or based onvarious other sources of website analytics data. Competitiveness maycomprise a measure of how likely a domain or the primary online contentobject 102 is to rank highly, such as on a first page of search engineresults, for a particular word, phrase, or term. The lower thepercentage on this metric, the harder it will be to achieve a high rankfor that term. This may be determined by a source like MozRank™(provided by Moz™), a PageRank™ (provided by Google™), or other rankingmetrics, reflecting the primary online content object's 102 domainauthority, absent other factors. Popularity may comprise a generalmeasure of a topic's monthly search volume or similar activity level,such as from various search engines. The higher the percentage, the morepopular the term. This may be obtained from a source like SEMRush™, suchas with data in broad ranges of 1-1000, 1000-10000, etc. Relevancy maycomprise a metric of how close a topic, phrase, term or the like toother content, such as topic already covered in other domains of a user,or the like. The lower the relevancy, the further away a given term isfrom what an enterprise is known for, such as based on comparison to acrawl by the automated crawler 104 of the enterprise's website and otherdomains. Relevancy may be provided or supported by the content contextmodels 118 as noted throughout this disclosure.

As the models 118 analyze more topics, the models learn and improve,such that increasingly accurate measures may be provided as relevancyand the like. Once the user has selected a topic, the user may beprompted to identify subtopics related to that topic. Also, the platform100 may recommend or auto-fill subtopics that have been validated basedon their similarity to the core topic and based on other scoringmetrics. When the user has filled out a cluster of topics, the platform100 may alert the user to suggested links connecting each subtopic pageto a topic page, including recommending adding links where they arecurrently absent. The content development and management application 150may also allow customers to track the performance of each cluster,including reporting on various metrics used by customers to analyzeindividual page performance. The content development and managementapplication 150 or tool may thus provide several major improvements overour current tools, including a better “information architecture” tounderstand the relationship between pieces of content, built-in keywordvalidation, and holistic analysis of how each cluster of topicsperforms.

In embodiments, the user interface 152 facilitates generation ofgenerated online presence content 160 related to the suggested topic138. In embodiments, the user interface 152 includes at least one of keywords and key phrases that represent the suggested topic 138, which maybe used to prompt the user with content for generation of onlinepresence content. In embodiments, the generated online presence contentis at least one of website content, mobile application content, a socialmedia post, a customer chat, a frequently asked question item, a productdescription, a service description and a marketing message. Inembodiments, the generated online presence content may be linked to theprimary online content object 102, such as to facilitate traffic betweenthe generated online presence content and the primary online contentobject 102 and to facilitate discovery of the primary online contentobject 102 and the generated online presence content 160 by searchengines 162. The user interface 152 for generating content may include afunction for exploring phrases for potential inclusion in the generatedonline presence content 160; for example, a user may input a phrase, andthe platform 100 may use a relevancy score 174 or other calculation toindicate a degree of similarity. For example, if a topic is only 58%similar to a core topic, then a user might wish to find something moresimilar. User interface elements, such as colors, icons, animatedelements and the like may help orient a user to favorable topics andhelp avoid unfavorable topics.

In embodiments, the application 150 may facilitate creation and editingof content, such as blog posts, chats, conversations, messages, websitecontent, and the like, and the platform may parse the phrases written inthe content to provide a relevancy score 174 as the content is written.For example, as a blog is being written, the marketer may see whetherphrases that are being written are more or less relevant to a primaryonline content object 102 that has been selected and attached to anenterprise, a project, or a brand within the platform 100. Thus, thecontent development and management application 150 may steer the contentcreator toward more relevant topics, and phrases that represent thosetopics. This may include prompts and suggestions from the suggestiongenerator 134. The user interface 152 may include elements for assistingthe user to optimize content, such as optimizing for a given readinglevel and the like. The user interface 152 may provide feedback, such asconfirming that the right key phrases are contained in a post, so thatit is ready to be posted.

In embodiments, the application 150 for developing a strategy fordevelopment of the generated online presence content 160 may accesscontent cluster data store 132 and may include various tools forexploring and selecting suggested topics 138 for generating thegenerated online presence content 160. In embodiments, the application150 may further access the content of the customer relationshipmanagement (CRM) system 158. In embodiments, the application 150includes a user interface 152 for developing content regarding asuggested topic 138 for presentation in a communication to a customer,wherein selection of a suggested topic 138 for presentation to acustomer is based at least in part on a semantic relationship betweenthe suggested topic as determined by at least one of the models 118 andat least one customer data record 164 relating to the customer stored inthe customer relationship management system 158.

The platform 100 may include, be integrated with, or feed the reportingand an analytics system 180 that may provide, such as in a dashboard orother user interface, such as, in a non-limiting example, in the userinterface 152 of the content development and management application 150,various reports and analytics 188, such as various measures ofperformance of the platform 100 and of the generated online contentobject 160 produced using the platform 100, such as prompted bysuggestions of topics. As search engines have increasingly obscuredinformation about how sites and other content objects are ranked (suchas by declining to provide keywords), it has become very important todevelop alternative measures of engagement. In embodiments, the platform100 may track interactions across the life cycle of engagement of anenterprise with a customer, such as during an initial phase ofattracting interest, such as through marketing or advertising that maylead to a visit to a website or other primary online content objects102, during a process of lead generation, during conversations orengagement with the customer (such as by chat functions, conversationalagents, or the like), during the process of identifying relevant needsand products that may meet those needs, during the delivery orfulfillment of orders and the provision of related services, and duringany post-sale follow-up, including to initiate further interactions. Byintegration with the CRM system 158 of an enterprise, the platform 100may provide measures that indicate what other activities of or relatingto customers, such as generation of leads, visits to web pages, trafficand clickstream data relating to activity on a web page, links tocontent, e-commerce and other revenue generated from a page, and thelike, were related to a topic, such as a topic for which the generatedonline content object 160 was created based on a suggestion generated inthe platform 100. Thus, by integration of a content development andmanagement application 150 and a CRM system 158, revenue can be linkedto the generated online presence content 160 and presented in thereporting and analytics system 180.

FIG. 8 shows an example of a user interface of the reporting andanalytics system 180.

In general, a wide range of analytics may be aggregated by topic cluster(such as a core topic and related topics linked to the core topic in thecluster), rather than by web page, so that activities involved ingenerating the content in the cluster can be attributed with the revenueand other benefits that are generated as a result. Among these areelements tracked in a CRM system 158, such as contact events, customers(such as prospective customers, leads, actual customers, and the like),deals, revenue, profit, and tasks.

In embodiments, the platform 100 may proactively recommend core topics,such as based on crawling and scraping existing site content of anenterprise. Thus, also provided herein is the auto-discovery engine 170,including various methods, systems, components, modules, services,processes, applications, interfaces and other elements for automateddiscovery of topics for interactions with customers of an enterprise,including methods and systems that assist various functions and roleswithin an enterprise in finding appropriate topics to draw customersinto relevant conversations and to extend the conversations in a waythat is relevant to the enterprise and to each customer. Automateddiscovery of relevant content topics may support processes and workflowsthat require insight into what topics should be written about, such asduring conversations with customers. Such processes and workflows mayinclude development of content by human workers, as well as automatedgeneration of content, such as within automated conversational agents,bots, and the like. Automated discovery may include identifying conceptsthat are related by using a combination of analysis of a relevant itemof text (such as core content of a website, or the content of an ongoingconversation) with an analysis of linking (such as linking of relatedcontent). In embodiments, this may be performed with awareness at abroad scale of the nature of content on the Internet, such that new,related topics can be automatically discovered that furtherdifferentiate an enterprise, while remaining relevant to its primarycontent. The new topics can be used within a wide range of enterprisefunctions, such as marketing, sales, services, public relations,investor relations and other functions, including functions that involvethe entire lifecycle of the engagement of a customer with an enterprise.

As noted above, customers increasingly expect more personalizedinteractions with enterprises, such as via context-relevant chats thatproperly reflect the history of a customer's relationship with theenterprise. Chats, whether undertaken by human workers, or increasinglyby intelligent conversational agents, are involved across all of thecustomer-facing activities of an enterprise, including marketing, sales,public relations, services, and others. Content development and strategyis relevant to all of those activities, and effective conversationalcontent, such as managed in a chat or by the conversational agent 182,needs to relate to relevant topics while also reflecting informationabout the customer, such as demographic, psychographic and geographicinformation, as well as information about past interactions with theenterprise. Thus, integration of the content development and managementplatform 100 with the CRM system 158 may produce appropriate topicswithin the historical context of the customer and the customer'sengagement with the enterprise. For example, in embodiments, tickets ortasks may be opened in a CRM system 158, such as prompting creation ofcontent, such as based on customer-relevant suggestions, via the contentdevelopment and management application 150, such as content for aconversation or chat with a customer (including one that may be managedby the conversational agent 182 or bot), content for a marketing messageor offer to the customer, content to drive customer interest in a webpage, or the like. In embodiments, a customer conversation or thecustomer chat 184 may be managed through the content development andmanagement application 150, such as by having the chat occur within theuser interface 152, such that an agent of the enterprise, like an insidesalesperson, can engage in the chat by writing content, while seeingsuggested topics 138, indicators of relevance or similarity 154 and thelike. In this context, relevance indicators can be based on scores notedabove (such as reflecting the extent of relevance to core topics thatdifferentiate the enterprise), as well as topics that are of interest tothe customer, such as determined by processing information, such as onhistorical conversations, transactions, or the like, stored in the CRMsystem 158. In embodiments, to facilitate increased, the customer chat184 may be populated with seed or draft content created by an automatedconversational agent 182, so that a human agent can edit the contentinto a final version for the customer interaction.

In embodiments, the models 118 (collectively referred to as one or morecontent context models), and the platform 100 more generally, may enablea number of capabilities and benefits, including helping users come upwith ideas of new topics to write about based on a combination of thecontent cluster data store 132, a graph of topics for the site or othercontent of the enterprise, and one or more analytics. This may helpwriters find gaps in content that should be effective, but that are notcurrently written about. The models 118, and platform 100 may alsoenable users to come up with ideas about new articles, white papers andother content based on effective topics. The models 118, and platform100 may also enable users to understand effectiveness of content at thetopic level, so that a user can understand which topics are engagingpeople and which aren't. This may be analyzed for trends over time, so auser can see if a topic is getting more or less engagement. The models118, and platform 100 may also enable users to apply information abouttopics to at the level of the individual contact record, such as in thecustomer relationship management system 158, to help users understandwith what content a specific person engages. For example, for a user“Joe,” the platform 100, by combining content development and managementwith customer relationship management, may understand whether Joe isengaging more in “cardio exercise” or “weightlifting.” Rather than onlylooking at the aggregate level, user may at the individual level forrelevant topics. Development of content targeted to an individual'stopics of interest may be time-based, such as understanding what contenthas recently been engaged with and whether preferences are changing overtime.

The models 118, and the platform 100 may also enable looking at crossrelationships between topics. For example, analytics within the platform100 and on engagement of content generated using the platform 100 mayindicate that people who engage frequently with a “cardio” topic alsoengage frequently with a “running” topic. If so, the platform 100 mayoffer suggested topics that are interesting to a specific person basedon identifying interest in one topic and inferring interest in others.

The models 118, and platform 100 may also enable development of emailcontent, such as based on understanding the topic of the content of anemail, an email campaign, or the like. This may include understandingwhich users are engaging with which content, and using that informationto determine which emails, or which elements of content within emails,are most likely to be engaging to specific users.

FIG. 8 illustrates a user interface for reporting information relatingto online content generated using the content development and managementplatform. Various indicators of success, as noted throughout thisdisclosure, may be presented, such as generated by the reporting andanalytics systems 180.

FIG. 9 depicts an embodiment of a user interface in which activityresulting from the use of the platform is reported to a marketer orother user. Among other metrics that are described herein, the userinterface can report on what customers, such as ones to be entered intoor already tracked in the CRM system, have had a first session ofengagement with content, such as a web page, as a result of the contentstrategy, such as where the customers arrive via a link contained in asub-topic or other topic linked to a core topic as described herein.

The present concepts can be applied to modern sophisticated searchingmethods and systems with improved success. For example, in acontext-sensitive or personalized search request, the results may beinfluenced by one or more of the following: location, time of day,format of query, device type from which the request is made, andcontextual cues.

In an embodiment, a topical cluster comprising a core topic and severalsub-topics can be defined and refined using the following generalizedprocess: 1. Mapping out of several (e.g., five to ten) of the topicsthat a target person (e.g., customer) is interested in; 2. Group thetopics into one or more generalized (core) topics into which thesub-topics could be fit; 3. Build out each of the core topics withcorresponding sub-topics using keywords or other methods; 4. Map outcontent ideas that align with each of the core topics and correspondingsub-topics; 5. Validate each idea with industry and competitiveresearch; and 6. Create, measure and refine the data and models andcontent discovered from the above process. Any disclosed steps are notintended to be limiting or exhaustive, as those skilled in the art mightappreciate alternate or additional steps suiting a given application.One or more steps may also be omitted or combined into one step, again,to suit a given application at hand.

In some embodiments, a system and method are provided that can be usedto provide relevancy scores (or quantitative metrics) as a service.Content generation suggestions can also be offered as a service usingthe present system and method, including synonyms, long tail key wordsand enrichment by visitor analytics in some instances.

FIG. 10 illustrates an example environment of a directed content system200. In embodiments, the directed content system 200 may be configuredto generate “directed content.” As used herein, directed content mayrefer to any textual, audio, and/or visual content that is at leastpartially personalized for an intended recipient based on informationderived by the directed content system 200. In embodiments, the directedcontent system 200 may be configured to identify recipients that arerelevant to a client. As used herein, a client may refer to anenterprise (e.g., a company, a non-profit organization, a governmentalentity, and the like) or an individual. A user affiliated with a clientmay access the directed content system 200 using a client device 260.The directed content system 200 may identify one or more intendedrecipients to which directed content may be sent to and/or may generatedirected content to one or more of the intended recipients. The directedcontent system 200 may then transmit the directed content to theintended recipients.

In embodiments, the directed content system 200 may include, but is notlimited to: a crawling system 202 that implements a set of crawlers thatfind and retrieve information from an information network (e.g., theInternet); an information extraction system 204 that identifiesentities, events, and/or relationships between entities or events fromthe information retrieved by the crawling system 202; one or moreproprietary databases 208 that store information relating toorganizations or individuals that use the directed content system 200;one or more knowledge graphs 210 representing specific types of entities(e.g., businesses, people, places, products), relationships betweenentities, the types of those relationships, relevant events, and/orrelationships between events and entities; a machine learning system 212that learns/trains classification models that are used to extractevents, entities, and/or relationships, scoring models that are used toidentify intended recipients of directed content, and/or models that areused to generate directed models; a lead scoring system 214 that scoresone or more organizations and/or individuals with respect to a contentgeneration task, the lead scoring system referencing information in theknowledge graph; and a content generation system 216 that generatescontent of a communication to a recipient in response to a request froma client to generate directed content pertaining to a particularobjective, wherein the recipient is an individual for which the leadingscoring system has determined a threshold level of relevance to theobjective of a client. The directed content system 200 uses theunderstanding from the machine learning system 212 to generate thedirected content.

In embodiments, the methods and systems disclosed herein include methodsand systems for pulling information at scale from one or moreinformation sources. In embodiments, the crawling system 202 may obtaininformation from external information sources 230 accessible via acommunication network 280 (e.g., the Internet), a private network, theproprietary database 208 (such as a content management system, acustomer relationship management database, a sales database, a marketingdatabase, a service management database, or the like), or other suitableinformation sources. Such methods and systems may include one or morecrawlers, spiders, clustering systems, proxies, services, brokers,extractors and the like, using various information systems andprotocols, such as Representational State Transfer (REST), Simple ObjectAccess Protocol (SOAP), Remote Procedure Call (RPC), Real Time OperatingSystem (RTOS) protocol, and the like. Such methods, systems, components,services and protocols are collectively referred to herein as“crawlers,” or a “set of crawlers,” except where context indicatesotherwise.

In embodiments, the information extraction system 204 may pull relevantinformation from each of a variety of data sources (referred to in somecases herein as streams), parse each stream to figure out the type ofstream, and optionally apply one or more explicit parsers to furtherparse specific streams based on the type or structure of the stream.Some streams with defined, static structures allow for direct extractionof information of known types, which can be inserted into the knowledgegraph or other data resource without much further processing. In othercases, such as understanding what event happened given a headline of anews article, more processing is required to develop an understanding ofthe event that can be stored for further use. Certain events are ofparticular interest to sales and marketing professionals because theytend to be associated with changes in an organization that may increaseor decrease the likelihood that an entity or individual will beinterested in a particular offering. These include changes inmanagement, especially in “C-level” executives like the CEO, CTO, CFO,CMO, CIO, CSO or the like and officer-level executives like thePresident or the VP of engineering, marketing or finance, which mayindicate directional changes that tend to lead to increased or decreasedpurchasing. In embodiments, a machine learning system 212 may beconfigured to learn to parse unstructured data sources to understandthat a specific type of event has occurred, such as an event that isrelevant to the likelihood that an organization or individual will beinterested in a particular offering. Relevant types of events for whichparticular machine learning systems 212 may be so configured mayinclude, in addition to changes in management, attendance at trade showsor other industry events, participation in industry organizations likeconsortia, working groups and standards-making bodies, financial andother events that indicate growth or shrinking of a business, as well asother events described throughout this disclosure.

FIG. 11 illustrates an example of the crawling system 202 and theinformation extraction system 204 maintaining the knowledge graph 210,whereby the crawling system 202 and the information extraction system204 may operate to obtain information from one or more informationsources 230 and to update the knowledge graph 210 based on the obtainedinformation. In FIG. 11, a set of crawlers 220 obtain (e.g., crawlingand/or downloading) information relating to entities and events fromvarious information sources 230. In embodiments, the set of crawlers 220are controlled/directed by the crawling system 202 to identify documentsthat may contain information regarding entities, events, andrelationships. Types of entities include, but are not limited to,organizations (e.g., companies), people, governments, cities, states,countries, dates, populations, markets, sectors, industries, roles, andproducts. Information about organizations may be obtained from, forexample, company news articles, job postings, SEC filings,organizational charts, press releases, and any other digital documentsrelating to organizations such as patents, trademarks, blog posts,mentions in forums, market reports, internal documents, companywebsites, and social media. Information about people may be obtainedfrom, for example, resumes (e.g., education, prior experience),scientific publications, patents, and any other digital documents suchas contact information, news mentions, social media pages, blog posts,and personal websites.

In embodiments, the crawlers 220 crawl Internet websites to obtaindocuments. Internet websites may include, but are not limited to, sitesthat include company news articles, job postings, SEC filings, patents,trademark registrations, copyrights, blog posts, mentions in forums,market reports, internal documents, company websites, and social media,as well as sites that include information about people, which mayinclude, but are not limited to, education (such as schools attended,degrees obtained, programs completed, locations of schooling and thelike), prior experience (including job experience, projects,participation on boards and committees, participating in industrygroups, and the like), scientific publications, patents, contactinformation, news mentions, social media, blog posts, and personalwebsites. Information may be extracted from websites via a variety oftechniques, including but not limited to explicit selection of specificdata fields (e.g., from .JSON), automatic extraction of data from rawwebsite code (e.g., from HTML or XML code), or automatic extraction ofdata from images (e.g., using OCR or image classifiers) or video ofwebsites (e.g., using video classifiers). The crawlers 220 may employvarious methods to simulate the behavior of human users, including butnot limited to simulating computer keyboard keystrokes, simulatingcomputer mouse movement, and simulating interaction with a browserenvironment. The crawlers 220 may learn to simulate interaction withwebsites by learning and replicating patterns in the behavior of realwebsite users.

In operation, the crawling system 202 may seed one or more crawlers 220with a set of resource identifiers (e.g., uniform resource identifiers(URIs), uniform resource locators (URLs), application resourceidentifiers, and the like). The crawler 220 may iteratively obtaindocuments corresponding to the seeded resource identifier (e.g., an HTMLdocument). In particular, the crawler 220 may parse the obtaineddocuments for links contained in the documents that include additionalresource identifiers. The crawler 220 may then obtain additionaldocuments corresponding to the newly seeded resource identifiers thatwere identified from the parsed documents. The crawler 220 may continuein this manner until the crawler does not find any new links. Thecrawler 220 may provide any obtained documents to the crawling system202, which can in turn dedupe any cumulative documents. The crawlingsystem 202 may output the obtained documents to the informationextraction system 204.

In embodiments, the information extraction system 204 may receivedocuments obtained from the crawlers 220 via the crawling system 202.The information extraction system 204 may extract text and any otherrelevant data that represents information about a company, anindividual, an event, or the like. Of particular interest to users ofthe directed content platform 200 disclosed herein, such as marketersand salespeople, are documents that contain information about eventsthat indicate the direction or intent of a company and/or direction orintent of an individual. These documents may include, among many others,blog posts from or about a company; articles from business news sourceslike Reuters™, CB Insights™, CNBC™, Bloomberg™, and others; securitiesfilings (e.g., 10K filings in the US); patent, trademark and/orcopyright filings; job postings; and the like. The informationextraction system 204 may maintain and update the knowledge graph 210based on the extracted information, as well as any additionalinformation that may be interpolated, predicted, inferred, or otherwisederived from the extracted information and/or a proprietary database208.

In embodiments, the information extraction system 204 (e.g., the entityextraction system 224 and the event extraction system 224) may discoverand make use of patterns in language to extract and/or deriveinformation relating to entities, events, and relationships. Thesepatterns may be defined in advance and/or may be learned by the system200 (e.g., the information extraction system 204 and/or the machinelearning system 212). The information extraction system 204 may identifya list of words (and sequences of words) and/or values contained in eachreceived document. In embodiments, the information extraction system 204may use the language patterns to extract various forms of information,including but not limited to entities, entity attributes, relationshipsbetween respective entities and/or respective events, events, eventtypes, attributes of events from the obtained documents. The informationextraction system 204 may utilize natural language processing and/ormachine learned classification models (e.g., neural networks) toidentify entities, events, and relationships from one or more parseddocuments. For example, a news article headline may include the text“Company A pleased to announce a deal to acquire Company B.” In thisexample, an entity classification models may be able to extract “CompanyA” and “Company B” as business organization entities because theclassification model may have learned that the term “deal to acquire” isa language pattern that is typically associated with two companies.Furthermore, an event classification model may identify a “companyacquisition event” based on the text because the event classificationmodel may have learned that the term “deal to acquire” is closelyassociated with “company acquisition events.” Furthermore, the eventclassification model may rely on the terms “Company A” and “Company B”to strengthen the classification, especially if both Company A andCompany B are both entities that are known to the system 200. Inembodiments, the information extraction system 204 may derive newrelationships between two or more entities from a newly identifiedevent. For example, in response to the news article indicating Company Ahas acquired Company B, the information extraction system 204 may infera new relationship that Company A owns Company B. In this example, anatural language processor may process the text to determine thatCompany A is the acquirer and Company B is the acquisition. Using theevent classification of “company acquisition event” and the results ofthe natural language processing, the information extraction module 204may infer that Company B now owns Company A. The information extractionsystem 204 may extract additional information from the news article,such as a date of the acquisition.

In some embodiments, the information extraction system 204 may rely on acombination of documents to extract entities, events, and relationships.For example, in response to the combination of i) a publicly availableresume of Person X indicating that Person X works at Company C (e.g.,from a LinkedIn® page of Person X); and ii) a press release issued byCompany B that states in the body text “Company B has recently addedPerson X as its new CTO,” the information extraction system 204 mayextract the entities Person X, Company B, Company C, and CTO. The nameof Person X and Company C may be extracted from the resume based onlanguage patterns associated with resumes, while the names of Company Band Person A, and the role CTO may be extracted from the press releasebased on a parsing and natural language processing of the sentencequoted above. Furthermore, the information extraction system 204 mayclassify two events from the combination of documents based on naturallanguage processing and a rules-based inference approach. First, theinformation extraction module 204 may classify a “hiring event” based onthe patterns of text from the quoted sentence. Secondly, the informationextraction module 204 may infer a “leaving event” with respect toCompany C and Person X based on an inference that if a person workingfor a first company is hired by another company, then the person haslikely left the first company. Thus, from the combination of documentsdescribed in the disclosure, the information extraction module 204 mayinfer that Person X has left Company C (a first event) and that CompanyB has hired Person X (a second event). Furthermore, in this example, theinformation extraction module 204 may infer updated relationships, suchas Person X no longer works for Company C and Person X now works forCompany B as a CTO.

In some embodiments, the information extraction system 204 may utilizeone or more proprietary databases 208 to assist in identifying entities,events, and/or relationships. In embodiments, the proprietary databases208 may include one or more databases that power a content relationshipmanagement system (not shown), where the database stores structured datarelating to leads, customers, products, and/or other data relating to anorganization or individual. This structured data may indicate, forexample, names of customer companies and potential customer companies,contact points at customer companies and potential customer companies,employees of a company, when a sale was made to a company (orindividual) by another company, emails that were sent to a particularlead from a company and dates of the emails, and other relevant datapertaining to a CRM. In these embodiments, the information extractionsystem 204 may utilize the data stored in the proprietary databases 208to identify entities, relationships, and/or events; to confirm entities,relationships, or events; and/or to refute identifications of entities,relationships, and/or events.

In embodiments, the entity extraction system 224 parses and derivesentities, entity types, entity attributes, and entity relationships intoa structured representation based on the received documents. The entityextraction system 224 may employ natural language processing, entityrecognition, inference engines, and/or entity classification models toextract entities, entity types, entity attributes, entity relationships,and relationship metadata (e.g., dates on which the relationship wascreated). In embodiments, the event extraction system 226 may use knownparsing techniques to parse a document into individual words andsequences of words. The event extraction system 226 may employ naturallanguage processing and entity recognition techniques to determinewhether any known entities are described in a document. In embodiments,the event extraction system 226 may utilize a classification model incombination with natural language processing and/or an inference engineto discover new entities, the entities' respective types, relationshipsbetween entities, and the respective types of relationships. Inembodiments, the entity extraction system 224 may extract entityattributes from the documents using natural language processing and/oran inference engine. In embodiments, the inference engine may compriseconditional logic that identifies entity attributes (e.g., If/Thenstatements that correspond to different entity attributes andrelationships). For example, the conditional logic may define rules forinferring an employer of an individual, a position of an individual, auniversity of an individual, a customer of an organization, a locationof an individual or organization, a product sold by an organization, andthe like. The entity extraction system 224 may employ additional oralternative strategies to identify and classify entities and theirrespective relationships.

In embodiments, the event extraction system 226 is configured to parseand derive information relating to events and how those events relate toparticular entities. For example, news articles, press releases, and/orother documents obtained from other information sources may be fed tothe event extraction system 226, which may identify entities referencedin the documents based on the information contained in the news articlesand other documents. The event extraction system 226 may be furtherconfigured to classify the events according to different event types(and subtypes). The event extraction system 226 may be configured toextract event attributes, such as from the headline and the body of anews article or another document, such as a press release, resume, SECfiling, trademark registration, court filings, and the like. Event typesmay include, but are not limited to, mergers and acquisitions, clientwins, partnerships, workforce reductions or expansions, executiveannouncements, bankruptcies, opening and closing of facilities, stockmovements, changes in credit rating, distribution of dividends, insiderselling, financial results, analyst expectations, funding events,security and data breaches, regulatory and legal actions, productreleases and recalls, product price changes, project initiatives, budgetand operations changes, changes in name or contact, changes in howproducts and services are represented or described, award wins,conference participations, sponsoring activities, new job postings,promotions, layoffs, and/or charitable donations. Examples of eventattributes may include entities that are connected to the event, atime/date when the event occurred, a date when the event occurred, ageographic area where the event occurred (if applicable), and the like.The event extraction system 226 may employ event classification models,natural language processing, and/or an inference engine to identify andclassify events. In embodiments, the event extraction system 226 mayreceive entity information, including entity values (e.g., a name of aperson or company, a job title, a state name) and entity types extractedby the entity extraction system 224 to assist in the eventclassification. In embodiments, an event classification model mayreceive entity information along with the features of a document toidentify and classify events. Drawing from the example of Company Aacquiring Company B, an event classification model may receive theentity types of Company A and Company B, the features of the document(e.g., results of parsing and/or natural language processing), as wellas a source of the document (e.g., news article from a business focusedpublication) to determine that the sentence fragment “a deal to acquire”corresponds to a company acquisition event, as opposed a real propertypurchase event or a sports trade event (both of which may also correlateto “a deal to acquire”). The event extraction system 226 may employadditional or alternative strategies to identify and classify events.

In embodiments, the information extraction system 204 structures theinformation into structured representations of respective, entities,relationships, and events. In embodiments, the information extractionsystem 204 updates the knowledge graph 210 with the structuredrepresentations.

FIG. 12 is a visual representation of a portion of an example knowledgegraph 210 representation. In embodiments, structured representations inthe knowledge graph may be represented by nodes and edges. In theillustrated example, the knowledge graph 210 includes entity nodes 252that represent entities (e.g., companies, people, places, roles, and thelike). In the example, the edges 254 that connect entity nodes 252represent relationships between the entities represented by the entitynodes 252 connected by a respective edge 254.

In embodiments, each entity node 252 in the knowledge graph 210 maycorrespond to a specific entity that is known to the system 200 and/oridentified by the entity extraction module 224. In some embodiments,each entity node 252 is (or points to) an entity record that includesinformation relating to the entity represented by the entity node,including an entity identifier (e.g., a unique value corresponding tothe entity), an entity type of the entity node (e.g., person, company,place, role, product, and the like), an entity value of the entity(e.g., a name of a person or company), and entity data corresponding tothe entity (e.g., aliases of a person, a description of a company, aclassification of a product, and the like).

In embodiments, each edge 254 in the knowledge graph 210 may connect two(or more) entity nodes 252 to define a relationship between two (ormore) entities represented by the entity nodes 252 connected by the edge254. In embodiments, edges in the graph may be (or point to)relationship records 254 that respectively define a relationshipidentifier (a unique identifier that identifies the relationship/edge),a relationship type between two or more entities that defines the typeof relationship between the connected entities (e.g., “works for,”“works as,” “owns,” “released by,” “incorporated in,” “headquarteredin,” and the like), relationship data (e.g., an entity identifier of aparent entity node and entity identifier(s) of one or more child entitynodes), and relationship metadata (e.g., a date on which therelationship was created and/or identified). In this way, two entitynodes 252 that are connected by an edge 254 may describe the type ofrelationship between the two entity nodes. In the illustrated example,an entity node 252 of Company A is connected to an entity node 252 ofDelaware/USA by an edge 254 that represents an “incorporated in”relationship type. In this particular instance, the entity node 252 ofCompany A is the parent node and the entity node 252 of Delaware/USA isthe child node by way of the directed “incorporated in” edge 254.

In some embodiments, the knowledge graph 210 may further include eventnodes (not shown). Event nodes may represent events that are identifiedby the event extraction system 226. An event node may be related to oneor more entity nodes 252 via one or more edges 254, which may representrespective relationships between the event and one or more respectiveentities represented by the one or more entity nodes connected to theevent node. In some embodiments, an event node may be (or point to) anevent record 256 that corresponds to a specific event, which may definean event identifier (e.g., a unique value that identifies the event), anevent type (e.g., a merger, a new hire, a product release, and thelike), and event data (e.g., a date on which the event occurred, a placethat the event occurred, information sources from which the event wasidentified, and the like).

In the case that the information extraction system 204 identifies a newentity, event, and/or relationship, the information extraction system204 may store the structured representations of new entity,relationship, and/or event in the knowledge graph 210. In cases of knownentities, events, and/or relationships, the information extractionsystem 204 may reconcile any newly derived data in the respectivestructured representations with data already present in the knowledgegraph 210. Updating entities, events, and/or relationships in theknowledge graph 210 may include deleting or replacing structuredrelationships and/or changing data corresponding to entities, events,and/or relationships in the knowledge graph 210. Drawing from theexample of Company A acquiring Company B above, the relationship betweenthe two entities (Company A and Company B) may be represented by aparent entity node 252 of Company A, a child node 252 of Company B, andan “owns” edge 254 connecting the two entity nodes that indicates therelationship type as parent node “owns” child node. Drawing from theexample of Person X, the information extraction system 204 may updatethe knowledge graph 210 by deleting or replacing the edge 254 definingthe relationship between the entity node 252 of Person X and the entitynode 252 of Company C, such that there is no longer an edge between theentity nodes of Person X and Company C or a previously defined edge (notshown) between the two entity nodes may be replaced with an edge 254that indicates a “used to work for” relationship between the parent nodeof Person X and the child entity node of Company C. Furthermore, in thisexample, the information extraction system 204 may update the knowledgegraph 210 to include a first edge 254 indicating a “works for”relationship between a parent node 252 of Person X and a child node 252of Company B, thereby indicating that Person X works for Company B. Theinformation extracting system 204 may further include a second edge 254indicating a “works as” relationship between the parent node 252 ofPerson X and a child node 254 of a CTO Role, which may be related backto Company B by an “employs” role.

Referring back to FIG. 10, the machine learning system 212 is configuredto perform machine learning tasks. Learning tasks may include, but arenot limited to, training machine learned models to perform specifictasks and reinforcing the trained models based on feedback that isreceived in connection with the output of a model. Examples of tasksthat can be performed by machine learned models can include, but are notlimited to, classifying events, classifying entities, classifyingrelationships, scoring potential recipients of messages, and generatingtext. Depending on the task, certain types of machine learning may bebetter suited to a particular task than others. Examples of machinelearning techniques can include, but are not limited to, decision treelearning, clustering, neural networks, deep learning neural networks,support vector machines, linear regression, logistic regression, naïveBayes classifiers, k-nearest neighbor, k-means clustering, randomforests, gradient boosting, Hidden Markov models, and other suitablemodel architectures.

In embodiments, a machine learning system 212 may be configured to learnto identify and extract information about events. In some embodiments,the machine learning system 212 may be configured to train eventclassification models (e.g., neural networks). An event classificationmodel may refer to a machine learned model that is configured to receivefeatures that are extracted from one or more documents and that outputone or more potential events that may be indicated by the documents (orfeatures thereof). Examples of features that may be extracted are wordsor sequences of words contained in a document or set of documents, datesthat are extracted from the documents, sources of the documents, and thelike.

In embodiments, the machine learning system 212 trains eventclassification models that identify events that indicate growth of abusiness, such as new job postings, financial reports indicatingincreased sales or market share, jobs reports indicating increasedemployment numbers, announcements indicating opening of new locations,and the like. Such events, because (among other reasons) they tend to begood indicators of available budgets for acquisition of goods andservices, may be relevant to sales and marketing professionals oforganizations who provide offerings that assist with growth, such asrecruiting services, information technology systems, real estateservices, office fixtures and furnishings, architecture and designservices, and many others.

In embodiments, the machine learning system 212 trains eventclassification models that identify events that indicate changing needsof a company, such as C-level hires, layoffs, acquisitions, mergers,bankruptcies, product releases, and the like. Such events tend to begood indicators of companies that may require new services, as thechanging of company needs tend to correlate to implementations of newsoftware solutions or needs for specific types of services or employees.These types of events may be of interest to businesses such asconstruction companies, software companies, staffing companies, and thelike.

In embodiments, the machine learning system 212 trains eventclassification models that identify events that tend to indicate that abusiness is flat, shrinking or failing, such as a decrease or lack ofincrease in job postings, financial reports indicating flat or decreasedsales or market share, reports indicating decreased employment numbers,reports of lay-offs, reports indicating closing of locations, and thelike. Such events may be relevant to sales and marketing professionalsof organizations who provide offerings that assist with turnaroundefforts, such as sales coaching services, bankruptcy services, and thelike.

In embodiments, the machine learning system 212 trains models that areconfigured to parse job postings of an entity to determine the nature ofan organization's hiring as an indicator of need for particular types ofgoods and services. Among other things, job postings tend to be fairlytruthful, as inaccurate information would tend to adversely impact theprocess of finding the right employees. In embodiments, the machinelearning system 212 may include a classifier that learns, based on atraining data set and/or under human supervision, to classify jobpostings by type, such that the classified job postings may beassociated with indicators of specific needs of an organization (whichitself can be determined by a machine learning system that is trainedand supervised). The needs can be stored, such as in the knowledge graphand/or in a customer relationships management or other databases asdescribed throughout this disclosure and the documents incorporated byreference herein, such as to allow a sales and marketing professional tofind appropriate recipients for an offering and/or configurecommunications to recipients within organizations that have relevantneeds.

In embodiments, the machine learning system 212 trains models that areconfigured to parse news articles mentioning an entity or individualsassociated with an entity to find events that are indicators of need forparticular types of goods and services. News articles tend to bechallenging, as they are typically unstructured and may use a wide rangeof language variations, including jargon, shorthand, and word play todescribe a given type of event. In embodiments, the machine learningsystem 212 may specify a frame for the kind of event that is beingsought, such as a specific combination of tags that characterize theevent. For example, where the machine learning system 212 needs to beconfigured to discover events related to a management change, a framecan be specified seeking the name of a person, a role within themanagement structure of a company, a company, and an action related tothat role. In embodiments, parsers may be configured for each of thoseelements of the frame, such that on a single pass of the article themachine learning system 212 can extract names, roles (e.g., “CEO” or “VPFinance” among many others), companies (including formal names andvariants like initial letters and stock symbols) and actions (e.g.,“retired,” “fired,” “hired,” “departs” and the like). In embodiments,names may include proper names of individuals (including full names,partial names, and nicknames) known to serve in particular roles, suchas reflected in a customer relationship management database (such asdescribed throughout this disclosure or in the documents incorporated byreference herein) that may be accessed by the machine learning system toassist with the parsing. The machine learning system 212, which may betrained using a training data set and/or supervised by one or morehumans, may thus learn to parse unstructured news articles and yieldevents in the form of the frame, which may be stored in the knowledgegraph, such as at nodes associated with the organization and/or theindividuals mentioned in the articles. In turn, the events may be usedto help sales and marketing professionals understand likely directionsof an enterprise. For example, among many other examples, the hiring ofa new CTO may indicate a near-term interest in purchasing new technologysolutions.

The machine learning system 212 may train event classification models inany suitable manner. For example, the machine learning system 212 mayimplement supervised, semi-supervised, and/or unsupervised trainingtechniques to train an event classification model. For example, themachine learning system 212 may train an event classification modelusing a training data set and/or supervision by humans. In someinstances, the machine learning system 212 may be provided with a baseevent classification model (e.g., a generic or randomized classificationmodel) and training data containing labeled and unlabeled data sets. Thelabeled data sets may, for example, include documents (or featuresthereof) that describe thousands or millions of known events havingknown event types. The unlabeled data sets may include documents (orfeatures thereof) without any labels or classifications that may or maynot correspond to particular events or event types. The machine learningsystem 212 may initially adjust the configuration of the base modelusing the labeled data sets. The machine learning system 212 may thentry identifying events from the unlabeled data sets. In a supervisedenvironment, a human may confirm or deny an event classification of anunlabeled data set. Such confirmation or denial may be used to furtherreinforce the event classification model. Furthermore, as the system 200(e.g., the event extraction module 226) operates to extract events frominformation obtained by the crawling system 202, the machine learningsystem 212 may utilize the classification of said event classifications,the information used to make the entity classifications, and any outcomedata resulting from the event classifications to reinforce the eventclassification model(s). Such event classification models may be trainedto find various indicators, such as indicators of specific industrytrends, indicators of need and the like.

In embodiments, the machine learning system 212 is configured to trainentity classification models. An entity classification model may be amachine learned model that receives one or more documents (or featuresthereof) and identifies entities indicated in the documents and/orrelationships between the documents. An entity classification model mayfurther utilize the knowledge graph as input to determine entities orrelationships that may be defined in the one or more documents. Themachine learning system 212 may train entity classification models in asupervised, semi-supervised, and/or unsupervised manner. For example,the machine learning system 212 may train the entity classificationmodels using a training data set and/or supervision by humans. In someinstances, the machine learning system 212 may be provided with a baseentity classification model (e.g., a generic or randomizedclassification model) and training data containing labeled and unlabeleddata sets. The labeled data sets may include one or more documents (orthe features thereof), labels of entities referenced in the one or moredocuments, labels of relationships between the entities referenced inthe one or more documents, and the types of entities and relationships.The unlabeled data sets may include one or more documents (or thefeatures thereof), but without labels. The machine learning system 212may initially train the base entity classification model based on thelabeled data sets. The machine learning system 212 may then attempt toclassify (e.g., classify entities and/or relationships) entities and/orrelationships from the unlabeled data sets. In embodiments, a human mayconfirm or deny the classifications output by an entity classificationmodel to reinforce the model. Furthermore, as the system 200 (e.g., theevent extraction module 226) operates to extract entities andrelationships from information obtained by the crawling system 202, themachine learning system 212 may utilize the classification of saidentities and relationships, the information used to make the entityclassifications, and any outcome data resulting from the entityclassifications to reinforce the entity classification model(s).

In embodiments, the machine learning system 212 is configured to traingenerative models. A generative model may refer to a machine learnedmodels (e.g., neural networks, deep neural networks, recurrent neuralnetworks, and the like) that are configured to output text given anobjective (e.g., a message to generate a lead, a message to follow up acall, and the like) and one or more features/attributes of an intendedrecipient. In some embodiments, a generative model outputs sequences ofthree to ten words at a time. The machine learning system 212 may traina generative model using a corpus of text. For example, the machinelearning system 212 may train a generative model used to generateprofessional messages may be trained using a corpus of messages,professional articles, emails, text messages, and the like. For example,the machine learning system 212 may be provided messages drafted byusers for intended objective. The machine learning system 212 mayreceive the messages, the intended objectives of the messages, andoutcome data indicating whether the message was successful (e.g.,generated a lead, elicited a response, was read by the recipient, andthe like). As the directed content system 200 generates and sendsmessages and obtains outcome data relating to those messages, themachine learning system 212 may reinforce a generative model based onthe text of the messages and the outcome data.

In embodiments, the machine learning system 212 is configured to trainrecipient scoring models. A lead scoring model 212 may be a machinelearned model (e.g., a regression model) that receives features orattributes of an intended recipient of a message and a message objectiveand determines a lead score corresponding to the intended recipient. Thelead score indicates a likelihood of a successful outcome with respectto the message. Examples of successful outcomes may include, but are notlimited to, a message is viewed by the recipient, a response message issent from the recipient, an article attached in the message is read bythe recipient, or a sale is made as a result of the message. The machinelearning system 212 may train the lead scoring model 212 in asupervised, semi-supervised, or unsupervised manner. In someembodiments, the machine learning system 212 is fed a training data setthat includes sets of triplets, where a triplet may include recipientattributes (e.g., employer, role, recent events, location, and thelike), a message objective (e.g., start a conversation, make a sale,generate a website click), and a lead score assigned (e.g., by a human)to the triplet given the attributes and the message objective. Themachine learning system 212 may initially train a model based on thetraining data. As the lead scoring model is deployed and personalizedmessages are sent to users, the machine learning system 212 may receivefeedback data 272 from a recipient device 270 (e.g., message wasignored, message was read, message was read and responded to) to furthertrain the scoring model.

The machine learning system 212 may perform additional or alternativetasks not described herein. Furthermore, while the machine learningsystem 212 is described as training models, in embodiments, the machinelearning system 212 may be configured to perform classification,scoring, and content generation tasks on behalf of the other systemsdiscussed herein.

FIG. 13 illustrates an example configuration of the lead scoring system214 and the content generation system 216 for identifying intendedrecipients of messages and generating personalized messages 218 for theone or more intended recipients. Traditionally, marketers andsalespeople rely on bulk emails that are created by populating contactinformation from a database into a block of free text that has fieldsfor elements that will be retrieved from the database and inserted intothe text at the position of the fields. For example, an email templatemay say “Hi {First name}, . . . ”, and first names from the databasewill be inserted at the point of the {First name} field. The methods andsystems disclosed herein enable substantial improvement and enhancementof such templated emails by making available, at large scale, a range ofinformation that is not typically available during bulk emailgeneration. This includes publicly available information aboutrecipients that may serve to personalize or customize the email in a waythat makes the message more likely to have a positive outcome (e.g.,opened, responded to, closes a deal, and the like).

The lead scoring system 214 and the content generation system 216 mayutilize the knowledge graph 210 and/or the proprietary databases 208, aswell as a message data 262 and a recipient profile 264 to identifyintended recipients and to generate personalized messages 218 for theintended recipients. A personalized message 218 may refer to a messagethat includes content that is specific to the intended recipient or theorganization of the intended recipient. It is noted for purposes ofdistinguishing from traditional templated bulk messages, merelyincluding a recipient's name, address, or organization name in one ormore template fields does not constitute a personalized message 218in-and-of-itself.

In embodiments, the message data 262 may refer to any information thatrelates to the messages that a user wishes to have sent. In embodiments,the message data 262 may include an objective of the email. For example,the objective an email may be to open a dialogue, make a sale, renew asubscription, have a recipient read an article, and the like. As isdiscussed below, the message data 262 may be received from a user via aclient device 260 and/or may be generated for the user by the systemsdescribed herein. In embodiments, message data may include a messagetemplate that includes content that is to be included in the body of themessage. For example, a message template may include the name of the“sender,” a description of the sender's business, a product description,and/or pricing information. A message template may be created by theuser (e.g., using the content management system disclosed elsewhereherein) or may be retrieved by the user and sent from the client device.A message template may include fields to be filled by the contentgeneration system 216 with information, including content that isgenerated by the content generation system 216 based on informationselected from the knowledge graph 210. In some embodiments, the systemmay automatically infer or generate message templates from historicaldata provided by the user and/or other users of the system 200.

Historical data may include, but is not limited to, historicalcommunication data (e.g., previously sent messages) and/or historicaland current customer relationship data, such as the dates, amounts, andattributes of business transactions. In some embodiments, the system 200may further rely on the objective of a message to generate the template.

In embodiments, a recipient profile 264 may include, among many otherexamples, information about an ideal recipient, including but notlimited to work location, job title, seniority, employer size, andemployer industry. The recipient profile 264 may be provided by a uservia a client device 260 and/or may be determined using machine learningbased on an objective of the message or other relevant factors. In thelatter scenario, the machine learning system 212 may determine whichtypes of information are relevant for predicting whether a recipientwill open and/or respond to a message. For example, the machine learningsystem 212 may receive, determine, and/or otherwise obtain feedback data272 from recipient devices 270. Feedback data 272 may indicate, forexample, whether a message was opened, whether a link in the message wasclicked, whether an attachment in the message was downloaded or viewed,whether a response was elicited, and the like.

In some scenarios, a user may have a good sense of the type of recipientthat the user believes would be interested in the user's offering. Forexample, a user may wish to sell a new software suite to CTOs of certaintypes of organizations (e.g., hospitals and health systems). In suchcases, a user may optionally input the recipient profile 264 and themessage data 262 into the system 200 via a client device 260. Inadditional or alternative embodiments, the recipient profile 264 may begenerated by machine learned models based on, for example, outcomesrelating to personalized messages previously generated by the system 200and/or the objective of the message.

In embodiments, the lead scoring system 214 is configured to identify alist of one or more intended recipients of a message based on therecipient profile 264 (whether specified by a user or generated bymachine learning). In embodiments, the lead scoring system 214 mayfilter the most relevant entities in the knowledge graph 210 using theideal recipient profile and create a recipient list. The recipient listmay indicate a list of people that fit the recipient profile. In someembodiments, the lead scoring system 214 may determine a lead score foreach person in the recipient list, whereby the lead score indicates alikelihood that a personalized message 218 sent to that person will leadto a successful outcome. In embodiments, the lead scoring system 214 mayuse historical and current data provided by the user and/or other usersof the system to assess the probability that each recipient in therecipient list will respond to the user's message, and/or will beinterested in knowing more about the user's offering, and/or willpurchase the user's offering. The historical and current data used toevaluate this likelihood may include the events and conditionsexperienced by recipients and their employers around the time they madesimilar decisions in the past, the timing of those events, and theirco-occurrence.

In some implementations, the lead scoring system 214 retrievesinformation relating to each person indicated in the recipient list fromthe knowledge graph 210. The information obtained from the knowledgegraph 210 may include information that is specific to that person and/orto the organization of the user. For example, the lead scoring system214 may obtain a title of the person, an education level of the person,an age of the person, a length of employment by the person, and/or anyevents that are associated with the person or the organization of theperson. The lead scoring system 214 may input this information to thelead scoring model, which outputs a lead score based thereon. The leadscoring system 214 may score each person in the recipient list. The leadscoring system 214 may then rank and/or filter the recipient list based,at least in part, on the lead scores of each respective person in thelist. For example, the lead scoring system 214 may exclude any peoplehaving lead scores falling below a threshold from the recipient list.The lead scoring system 214 may output the list of recipients to thecontent generation system 216.

In embodiments, determining which recipients (referred to in some casesas “leads”) should receive a communication may be based on one or moreevents extracted by the information extraction system 204. Examples ofthese types of events may include, but are not limited to, job postings,changes in revenue, legal events, changes in management, mergers,acquisitions, corporate restructuring, and many others. For a givenrecipient, the lead scoring system 214 may seek to match attributes ofan individual (such as a person associated with a company) to anextracted event. For example, in response to an event where Company Ahas acquired Company B, the attributes of an individual that may matchto the event may be “works for Company B,” “Is a C-level or VP levelexecutive,” and “Lives in New York City.” In this example, a personhaving these attributes may be receptive to a personalized message 218from an executive headhunter. In this way, the lead scoring system 214may generate the list of intended users based on the matches ofattributes of the individual to the extracted event. In someembodiments, the lead scoring system 214 may generate the list of theintended users based on the matches of attributes of the individual tothe extracted event given the subject matter and/or objective of themessage.

In embodiments, the content generation system 216 receives a recipientlist and generates a personalized message 218 for each person in thelist. The recipient list may be generated by the lead scoring system 214or may be explicitly defined by the user. The content generation system216 may employ natural language generation techniques and/or agenerative model to generate directed content that is to be included ina personalized message. In embodiments, the content generation system216 may generate directed content for each intended recipient includedin the recipient list. In generating directed content for a particularindividual, the content generation system 216 may retrieve informationthat is relevant to individual from the knowledge graph 210 and may feedthat information into a natural language generator and/or a generativemodel. In this way, the content generation system 216 may generate oneor more instances of directed content that is personalized for the user.For example, the content generation system 216 for an individual thatwas recently promoted at a company that recently went public may includethe following instances of directed content: “Congratulations on therecent promotion!” and “I just read about your company's IPO, that'sgreat news!” In embodiments, the content generation system 216 may mergethe directed content with any parts of the message that is to be commonamongst all personalized messages. In some of these embodiments, thecontent generation system 216 may merge the directed content for aparticular intended recipient with a message template to obtain apersonalized message for the particular intended recipient. Inembodiments, the content generation system 216 may obtain the propercontact information of an intended recipient and may populate a “to”field of the message with the proper contact information. Upongenerating a personalized message, the content generation system 216 maythen output the personalized message. Outputting a personalized messagemay include transmitting the personalized message to an account of theintended recipient (e.g., an email account, a phone number, a socialmedia account, and the like), storing the personalized message in a datastore, or providing the personalized message for display to the user,where the user can edit and/or approve the personalized message beforetransmission to the intended recipient. A respective personalizedmessage 218 may be delivered to a recipient indicated in the recipientlist using a variety of messaging systems including, but not limited to,email, short message service, instant messaging, telephone, facsimile,social media direct messages, chat clients, and the like.

In embodiments, the content generation system 216 may utilize certaintopics of information when generating directed content that can beincluded in an email subject line, opening greeting, and/or otherportions of a message to make a more personal message for a recipient.For example, the content generation system 216 may utilize topics suchas references to the recipient's past (such as to events the recipientattended, educational institutions the recipient attended, or the like),to the recipient's relationships (such as friends or businessrelationships), to the recipient's affinity groups (such as clubs,sports teams, or the like), and many others. In a specific example, thecontent generation system 216 may generate directed content thatreferences the recipient's college, note that the sender observed thatthe recipient attended a recent trade show, and ask how the recent tradeshow went. In embodiments, the content generation system 216 mayretrieve information from the knowledge graph 210 regarding an intendedrecipient and may provide that information to a natural languagegenerator to obtain directed content that may reference topics that arecipient may be receptive to. In embodiments, the machine learningsystem 212 can learn which topics are most likely to lead to successfuloutcomes. For example, the machine learning system 212 may monitorfeedback data 272 to determine which messages are being opened orresponded to versus which messages are being ignored. The machinelearning system 212 use such feedback data 272 to determine topics thatare more likely to lead to successful outcomes.

Events of particular interest to salespeople and marketers may includeevents that indicate a direction of the recipient's business, such asthe hiring of a C-level executive, the posting of job openings, asignificant transaction of the business (such as a merger oracquisition), a legal event (such as the outcome of a litigation, aforeclosure, or a bankruptcy proceeding), and the like. Acquiring suchinformation from public sources at scale is challenging, as sources forthe information are often unstructured and ambiguous. Accordingly, aneed exists for the improved methods and systems provided herein forretrieving information from public sources at scale, recognizinginformation that may be relevant or of interest to one or morerecipients, developing an understanding the information, and generatingcontent for communication to one or more recipients that uses at least aportion of the information.

Building the knowledge graph 210 may be an automated or semi-automatedprocess, including one where machine learning occurs with supervisionand where content derived from crawled documents is merged for an entityonce confidence is achieved that the content in fact relates to theentity. As the knowledge graph 210 grows with additional content, thepresence of more and more content enriches the context that can be usedfor further matching of events, thus improving the ability to ascribefuture events accurately to particular entities and individuals. Inembodiments, one or more knowledge graphs 210 of individuals andentities may be used to seed the knowledge graph 210 of the system 200,such as a knowledge graph 210 from a CRM database, or a publiclyavailable database of organizations and people, such as Freebase™ Jago™,Divipedia™, Link Data™, Open Data Cloud™ or the like. In embodiments, ifa user realizes that an article is not really about the company theyexpected, the user can flag the error; that is, the process of linkingarticles to entities can be human-supervised.

Using the above methods and systems, a wide range of content, such asnews articles and other Internet content, can be associated in theknowledge graph 210 with each of a large number of potential recipients,and the recipients can be scored based on the matching of attributes inthe knowledge graph 210 to desired attributes of the recipientsreflected in the recipient profile 264. For example, all CTOs and VPs ofengineering who have started their jobs in the last three months can bescored as the most desired recipients of a communication about a newsoftware development environment, and a relevant article can beassociated with each of them in the knowledge graph 210.

Once a set of recipients is known, the system 200 may assist withgeneration of relevant content, such as targeted emails, chats, textmessages, and the like. In such cases, the system composes apersonalized message 218 for each recipient in the recipient list bycombining a selected message template with information about therecipient and the recipient's organization that is stored in theknowledge graph 210. The information about a recipient and/or therecipient's organization may be inserted into a message template usingnatural language generation and/or a generative model to obtain thepersonalized message. The content generation system 216 may usestatistical models of language, including but not limited to automaticsummarization of textual information to generate directed content basedon the information about the recipient and/or the recipient'sorganization. In embodiments, the content generation system 216 maymerge the directed content into a message template to obtain thepersonalized message for a recipient.

In embodiments, a range of approaches, or hybrids thereof, can be usedfor natural language generation. In some cases, the knowledge graph 210may be monitored and maintained to ensure that the data containedtherein is clean data. Additionally, or alternatively, the contentgeneration system 216 can be configured to use only very high confidencedata from the knowledge graph 210 (e.g., based on stored indicators ofconfidence in respective instances of data). Being clean for suchpurposes may include the data being stored as a certain part of speech(e.g., a noun phrase, a verb of a given tense, or the like). Being cleanmay also include being stored with a level of confidence that the datais accurate, such as having an indicator of confidence that it isappropriate to use abbreviations of a business name (e.g., “IBM” insteadof “International Business Machines”), that is appropriate to useabbreviated terms (e.g., “CTO” instead of “Chief Technology Officer”),or the like. In embodiments, where data in the knowledge graph 210 maynot be of sufficient structure or confidence, a generative model may beused to generate tokens (e.g., words and phrases) from the content(e.g., information from news articles, job postings, website content,etc.) in the knowledge graph 210 associated with an organization orindividual, whereby the model can be trained (e.g., using a training setof input-output pairs) to generate content, such as headlines, phrases,sentences, or longer content that can be inserted into a message.

In embodiments, each respective personalized message may be sent with amessage tracking mechanism to a respective recipient of the recipientlist. A message tracking mechanism may be a software mechanism thatcauses transmission of feedback data 272 to the system 200 in responseto a certain triggering action. For example, a message trackingmechanism may transmit a packet indicating an identifier of thepersonalized message and a timestamp when the recipient opens the email.In another example, a message tracking mechanism may transmit a packetindicating an identifier of the personalized message and a timestampwhen a recipient downloads an attachment or clicks on a link in thepersonalized message. In embodiments this may be accomplished by using abatch email system as described in U.S. patent application Ser. No.15/884,247 (entitled: QUALITY-BASED ROUTING OF ELECTRONIC MESSAGES andfiled: Jan. 30, 2018); U.S. patent application Ser. No. 15/884,251(entitled: ELECTRONIC MESSAGE LIFECYCLE MANAGEMENT and Filed: Jan. 30,2018); U.S. patent application Ser. No. 15/884,264 (entitled: MANAGINGELECTRONIC MESSAGES WITH A MESSAGE TRANSFER AGENT and filed: Jan. 30,2018); U.S. patent application Ser. No. 15/884,268 (entitled: MITIGATINGABUSE IN AN ELECTRONIC MESSAGE DELIVERY ENVIRONMENT and filed: Jan. 30,2018), U.S. patent application Ser. No. 15/884,273 (entitled:INTRODUCING A NEW MESSAGE SOURCE INTO AN ELECTRONIC MESSAGE DELIVERYENVIRONMENT and filed: Jan. 30, 2018), and PCT Application Serial NumberPCT/US18/16038 (entitled: PLATFORM FOR ELECTRONIC MESSAGE PROCESSING andfiled: Jan. 30, 2018), the contents of which are all herein incorporatedby reference. In embodiments, feedback data 272 may include additionalor alternative types of data, such as message tracking information andlanguage that was used in a response (if such response occurred).

In embodiments, the feedback data 272 corresponding to personalizedmessages sent by the system 200 and potential responses to thepersonalized messages 218 may be received by the system and analyzed byan analytical engine 290. The analytical engine 290 may utilize thefeedback data 272 to identify feedback data 272 corresponding to thepersonalized messages 218 sent by the system 200 and potential responsesto those personalized messages 218 may include, but is not limited to,whether the message 218 was opened, whether an attachment wasdownloaded, whether a message was responded to, tracking information,language of a potential response from the recipient, and any otherinformation contained explicitly or implicitly in the messagecommunications such as the time and day the message was sent, opened andreplied to, and the location where the message was read and replied to.The analytical engine 290 may perform language and/or content tests onthe feedback data 272. Language and content tests may include, but arenot limited to, AB testing, cohort analysis, funnel analysis, behavioralanalysis, and the like. The results from the analytical engine 290 maybe presented to the user. The presentation of the results can beachieved using a variety of methods including, but not limited to, aweb-based dashboard, reports or summary emails. In presenting theresults of the analytical engine 290 with respect to a set ofpersonalized messages sent on behalf of a user to the user, the user maythen take appropriate actions to refine his or her recipient profile 264and/or message template 262. In embodiments, the system 200 may takeappropriate actions by modifying future personalized message using theresults of language and content tests. The system 200 may furthermoretake appropriate actions to refine the ideal recipient profile.

In embodiments, the analytical engine 290 may pass the feedback data 272to the machine learning system 212, which may use the feedback data 272to reinforce one or more models trained by the machine learning system212. In this way, the machine learning system 212 can determine whattypes of recipients correlate to higher rates of successful outcomes(e.g., are more likely to open and/or respond to a personalizedmessage), what type of events correlate to higher rates of successfuloutcomes, what time frames after an event correlate to higher rates ofsuccessful outcomes, what topics in the directed content correlate tohigher rates of successful outcomes, and the like.

As noted above, the system 200 may be used to help salespeople andmarketers, such as to send automatically generated emails promoting anoffering, where the emails are enriched with information that showsawareness of context and includes information of interest to recipientswho match a given profile. The emails are in particular enriched withtext generated from the knowledge graph 210 in which relevantinformation about organizations and individuals, such as eventinformation, is stored. In embodiments the system 200 generates subjectlines, blog post titles, content for emails, content for blog posts, orthe like, such as phrases of a few words, e.g., about 5 words, about 6-8words, about 10 words, about 15 words, a paragraph, or more, up to anincluding a whole article of content. In embodiments, where largeamounts of reference data are available (such as where there are manyarticles about a company), it is possible to generate full articles. Inother cases, shorter content may be generated, as noted above, bytraining a system to generate phrases based on training on a set ofinput-output pairs that include event content as inputs and summarywords and phrases as outputs. As an example, company descriptions havebeen taken from LinkedIn™ and used to generate conversationaldescriptions of companies. Inputs varied by company, as the nature ofthe data was quite diverse. Outputs were configured to include anoun-phrase and a verb-phrase, where the verb phrase was constrained tobe in a given tense. In embodiments, a platform and interface areprovided herein in which one or more individuals (e.g., curators), mayreview input text (such as of company websites, news articles, jobpostings, and other content from the knowledge graph 210) and theindividuals can enter output text summarizing the content of the inputsin the desired form (noun phrase, verb phrase). The platform may enablethe user to review content from the knowledge graph as well as to searchan information network, such as a CRM system or the Internet, to findadditional relevant information. In embodiments, the CRM system mayinclude access to data about recipients maintained in a sales database,a marketing database, a service database, or a combination thereof, suchthat individuals preparing output text (which in turn is used to trainthe natural language generation system) have access to privateinformation, such as about conversations between salespeople andindividuals in the recipient list, past communications, and the like.

In embodiments, training data from the platform may be used to train amodel to produce generated text, and the curators of the platform may inturn review the text to provide supervision and feedback to the model.

In embodiments, the system 200 may include automated follow-updetection, such that variants of language generated by the model may beevaluated based on outcomes, such as responses to emails, chats andother content, deals won, and the like. Thus, provided herein is asystem wherein the outcome of a transaction is provided as an input totrain a machine learning system to generate content targeted to arecipient who is a candidate to undertake a similar transaction.

In embodiments, outcome tracking can facilitate improvement of variouscapabilities of the system 200, such as information extraction,cleansing of content, generation of recipient profiles, identificationof recipients, and generation of text. In embodiments, text generationmay be based on the nature of the targeted recipient, such as based onattributes of the recipient's organization (such as the size of theorganization, the industry in which it participates, and the like). Inembodiments, a machine learning system may provide for controlled textgeneration, such as using a supervised approach (as described in thedisclosure with summarization) and/or with an unsupervised or deeplearning approach. In embodiments, the system may train a model to learnto generate, for example, blog post titles, email subject lines, or thelike, conditioned on attributes like the industry of the recipient, theindustry of a sales or marketing person, or other attributes. Inembodiments, different language variants may be generated, such as textof different lengths, text of different complexity, text with differentword usage (such as synonyms), and the like, and a model may be trainedand improved on outcomes to learn to generate text that is most likelyto achieve a favorable outcome, such as an email or blog post beingread, a reply being received, content being clicked upon, a deal won, orthe like. This may include A/B type testing, use of genetic algorithms,and other learning techniques that include content variation and outcometracking. In embodiments, content may be varied with respect to variousfactors such as verb tense, sentiment, and/or tone. For example, verbtense can be varied by as using rule-based generation of differentgrammatical tenses from tokens (e.g., words and phrases) contained incontent attached to a node in the knowledge graph 210. In anotherexample, sentiment can be varied by learning positive and negativesentiment on a training set of reviews or other content that has a knownpositive or negative sentiment, such as numerically numbered or“starred” reviews on e-commerce sites like Amazon™ or review sites likeYelp™. In another example, tone can be varied by learning on text thathas been identified by curators as angry, non-angry, happy, and thelike. Thus, variations of text having different length, tense,sentiment, and tone can be provided and tracked to determinecombinations that produce favorable outcomes, such that the contentgeneration system 216 progressively improves in its ability to produceeffecting content for communications.

In various embodiments using no supervision (e.g., unsupervisedlearning), as soon as the system 200 has anything as an output, thesystem 200 can begin collecting labels, which in turn can be used forlearning. In embodiments, the system can train an unsupervised model tocreate a heuristic, then apply supervision to the heuristic.

In embodiments, outcome tracking may include tracking content todetermine what events extracted by the information extraction system,when used to generate natural language content for communications, tendto predict deal closure or other favorable outcomes. Metrics on dealclosure may be obtained for machine learning from a CRM system, such asone with an integrated sales, marketing and service database asdisclosed herein and in the documents incorporated by reference.

In embodiments, the system 200 may include variations on timing ofevents that may influence deal closure; that is, the system 200 mayexplore how to slice up time periods with respect to particular types ofevents in order to determine when an event of a given type is likely tohave what kind of influence on a particular type of outcome (e.g., adeal closure). This may include events extracted by the informationextraction system 204 from public sources and events from, for example,a CRM system, an email interaction tracking system, a content managementsystem, or the like. For example, the time period during which a CTOchange has an influence on purchasing behavior can be evaluated bytesting communications over different time intervals, such that thesystem 200 learns what events, over what time scales, are worthfactoring in for purposes of collecting information, storing informationin the knowledge graph 210 (as “stale” events can be discarded), usinginformation to generate content, targeting recipients, and forming andsending communications to the recipients. Outcome tracking can includetracking interaction information with email systems, as described in thedocuments incorporated herein by reference. As examples, the machinelearning system 212 may learn what communications to send if a prospecthas opened up collateral several times in a six-month space, how thecadence of opening emails or a white paper corresponds to purchasingdecisions, and the like. As another example, if an event indicates achange in a CTO, the event may be tracked to discover a rule orheuristic, such as that a very recent (e.g., within two months) CTOchange might indicate difficulty closing a deal that was in thepipeline, while a change that is not quite as recent (e.g., between fiveand eight months before) might indicate a very favorable time tocommunicate about the same offering. Thus, methods and systems areprovided for learning time-based relevance of events for purposes ofconfiguration of communications that include content about the events torecipients of offers. In embodiments, the system 200 may vary timewindows, such as by sliding time windows of varying duration (e.g.,numbers of weeks, months, or the like) across a starting and endingperiod (e.g., one-year, some number of months, multiple years, or thelike), before or after a given date, such as a projected closing datefor a deal, or the like. The system 200 can then see what happened ateach point of time and adjust the sizes of time windows for informationextraction, recipient targeting, message generation, and other itemsthat are under control of the system 200, including under control ofmachine learning. Thus, the system can run varying time windows againsta training set of outcomes (such as deal outcomes from a CRM system asdisclosed herein) to tune the starting point and duration of a timewindows around each type of event, in order to learn what events areuseful over what time periods.

As noted above, win-loss data and other information from a CRM systemmay be used to help determine what data is useful, which in turn avoidsunnecessary communication to recipients who are not likely to beinterested. Thus, an event timing data set is provided, wherein varyingtime windows are learned for each event to determine the effect of theevent on outcomes when the event is associated with communications aboutofferings. Outcomes can include wins and losses of deals (such as formany different elements of the systems), messages opened (such as forlearning to generate subject lines of emails), messages replied to (suchas for learning to generate suitable content), and the like. Inembodiments, time windows around events may, like other elements, belearned by domain, such as where the industry involved plays a role. Forexample, the same type of event, like a CTO change, may be relevant forvery different time periods in different industries, such as based onthe duration of the typical sales cycle in the industry.

In embodiments, learning as described herein may include model-basedlearning based on one or more models or heuristics as to, for example:what types of events and other information are likely to be of interestor relevance for initiating or continuing conversations; what recipientsshould be targeted and when, based on industry domain, type of event,timing factors, and the like; what content should be included inmessages; how content should be phrased; and the like. Learning may alsoinclude deep learning, where a wide range of input factors areconsidered simultaneously, with feedback from various outcomes describedthroughout this disclosure and in the documents incorporated byreference herein. In embodiments, learning may use neural networks, suchas feed forward neural networks, classifiers, pattern recognizers, andothers. For generative features, such as natural language generation,one or more recurrent neural networks may be used. The system may run ona distributed computing infrastructure, such as a cloud architecture,such as the Amazon Web Services™ (AWS™) architecture, among others.

In embodiments, content generated using the system, such as directedcontent enriched with information extracted by the informationextraction system and stored in the knowledge graph, may be used for avariety of purposes, such as for email marketing campaigns, forpopulating emails, chats and other communications of salespeople, forchats that relate to sales, marketing, service and the like, for dialogfunctions (such as by conversational agents), and the like. Inembodiments, content is used in conjunction with a content managementsystem, a customer relationship management system, or the like, asdescribed throughout this disclosure and in the documents incorporatedby reference herein.

In embodiments, methods and systems disclosed herein may be used forsales coaching. Conventionally a supervisor may review a sales call ormessage with a salesperson, such as by playing audio of a call orreviewing text of an email. In embodiments, audio may be transcribed andcollected by the information extraction system disclosed herein,including to attach the transcript to a knowledge graph. The transcriptmay be used as a source of content for communications, as well as todetermine scripts for future conversations. As noted above with respectto variations in language, variations in the script for a sales call maybe developed by the natural language generation system, such asinvolving different sequences of concepts, different timing (such as byproviding guidance on how long to wait for a customer to speak),different language variations, and the like. Machine learning, such astrained on outcomes of sales conversations, may be used to developmodels and heuristics for guiding conversations, as well as to developcontent for scripts.

In embodiments, the system 200 may be used to populate a reply to anemail, such as by parsing the content of the email, preparing a replyand inserting relevant content from the knowledge graph in the reply,such as to customize a smart reply to the context, identity,organization, or domain of the sender. This may include allowing arecipient to select a short response from a menu, as well as enriching ashort response with directed content generated by the content generationsystem 216 using the knowledge graph 210.

In embodiments, the system 200 may be used in situations where a user,such as a sales, marketing, or service person, has a message template,and the system is used to fill in an introductory sentence with datathat comes from a node 252 of the knowledge graph 210 that matches oneor more attributes of the targeted recipient. This may include takingstructured data from the knowledge graph 210 about organizations andpopulating a sentence with appropriate noun phrases and verb phrases (ofappropriate tense).

In embodiments, the system 200 may provide an activity feed, such as arecommended list of recipients that match timely event information inthe knowledge graph 210 based on a preexisting recipient profile orbased on a recipient profile generated by the system as described in thedisclosure. The system may recommend one or more templates for a givenrecipient and populate at least some of the content of an email to therecipient. In embodiments involving email, the system 200 may learn,based on outcomes, such as deals won, emails opened, replies, and thelike, to configure email content, to undertake and/or optimize a numberof relevant tasks that involve language generation, such as providing anoptimal subject line as a person types an email, suggesting a preferredlength of an email, and the like. The system 200 may look at variousattributes of generated language in optimizing generation, including thenumber of words used, average word length, average phrase length,average sentence length, grammatical complexity, tense, voice, wordentropy, tone, sentiment, and the like. In embodiments, the system 200may track outcomes based on differences (such as a calculated editdistance based on the number and type of changes) between a generatedemail (or one prepared by a worker) and a template email, such as todetermine the extent of positive or negative contribution of customizingan email from a template for a recipient.

In embodiments, the system 200 may be used to generate a smart reply,such as for an automated agent or bot that supports a chat function,such as a chat function that serves as an agent for sales, marketing orservice. For example, if representatives typically send out a link orreference in response to a given type of question from a customer withina chat, the system 200 can learn to surface the link or reference to aservice person during a chat, to facilitate more rapidly gettingrelevant information to the customer. Thus, the system 200 may learn toselect from a corpus a relevant document, video, link or the like thathas been used in the past to resolve a given question or issue.

In embodiments, the system 200 may automatically detect inappropriateconduct, such as where a customer is engaged in harassing behavior via achat function, so that the system prompts (or generates) a response thatis configured to draw the inappropriate conversation to a quickconclusion, protecting the representative from abuse and avoidingwasting time on conversations that are not likely to lead to productiveresults.

In embodiments, the system 200 may be used to support communications byservice professionals. For example, chat functions are increasingly usedto provide services, such as to help customers with standard activities,like resetting passwords, retrieving account information, and the like.In embodiments, the system 200 may serve a relevant resource, such asfrom a knowledge graph, which may be customized for the recipient withcontent that is relevant to the customer's history (such as from a CRMsystem) or that relates to events of the customer's organization (suchas extracted by the information extraction system).

In embodiments, the system 200 may provide email recommendations andcontent for service professionals. For example, when a customer submitsa support case, or has a question, the system may use events about theiraccount (such as what have the customer has done before, product usagedata, how much the customer is paying, and the like), such as based ondata maintained in a service support database (which may be integratedwith a sales and marketing database as described herein), in order toprovide recommendations about what the service professional should writein an email (such as by suggesting templates and by generatingcustomized language for the emails, as described herein). Over time,service outcomes, such as ratings, user feedback, measures of time tocomplete service, measures of whether a service ticket was opened, andothers may be used to train the system 200 to select appropriatecontent, to generate appropriate language and the, in various waysdescribed throughout this disclosure. Outcomes may further include oneor more indicators of solving a customer's problem, such as the numberof responses required (usually seeking to keep them low); presence orabsence of ticket deflection (i.e., avoiding unnecessary opening ofservice tickets by providing the right answer up front); the timeelapsed before solution or resolution of a problem; user feedback andratings; the customer's net promoter score for the vendor before andafter service was provided; one or more indices of satisfaction ordissatisfaction; and the like.

FIG. 14 illustrates an example configuration of the directed contentsystem 200. In the illustrated example, the directed content system 200includes a processing system 300, a communication system 310, and astorage system 320.

The processing system 300 includes one or more processors that executecomputer-readable instructions and non-transitory memory that stores thecomputer-readable instructions. In implementations having two or moreprocessors, the two or more processors can operate in an individual ordistributed manner. In these implementations, the processors may beconnected via a bus and/or a network. The processors may be located inthe same physical device or may be located in different physicaldevices. In embodiments, the processing system 300 may execute thecrawling system 202, the information extraction system 204, the machinelearning system(s) 212, the lead scoring system 214, and the contentgeneration system 216. The processing system 300 may execute additionalsystems not shown.

A communication system 310 may include one or more transceivers that areconfigured to effectuate wireless or wired communication via acommunication network 280. The communication system 310 may implementany suitable communication protocols. For example, the communicationsystem 310 may implement, for example, the IEEE 801.11 wirelesscommunication protocol and/or any suitable cellular communicationprotocol to effectuate wireless communication with external devices viaa wireless network. Additionally, or alternatively, the communicationsystem 310 may be configured to effectuate wired communication. Forexample, the communication system 310 may be configured to implement aLAN communication protocol to effectuate wired communication.

The storage system 320 includes one or more storage devices. The storagedevices may be any suitable type of computer readable mediums, includingbut not limited to read-only memory, solid state memory devices, harddisk memory devices, Flash memory devices, one-time programmable memorydevices, many time programmable memory devices, RAM, DRAM, SRAM, networkattached storage devices, and the like. The storage devices may beconnected via a bus and/or a network. Storage devices may be located atthe same physical location (e.g., in the same device and/or the samedata center) or may be distributed across multiple physical locations(e.g., across multiple data centers). In embodiments, the storage system320 may store one or more proprietary databases 208 and one or moreknowledge graphs 210.

FIG. 15 illustrates a method for generating personalized messages onbehalf of a user. In embodiments, the method is executed by the system200 described with respect to FIGS. 10-14. The method 400 may, however,be performed by any suitable system. In embodiments, the method 400 isexecuted by the processing system 300 of the system 200.

At 410, the system obtains a recipient profile and message data. Inembodiments, the message data may include a message template and/or anobjective of the message. The message data may be received from a userof the system and/or derived by the system. For example, in someembodiments, the user may provide a message objective and/or the messagetemplate. In some embodiments, the user may provide a message object andthe system may generate the message template. In embodiments, arecipient profile may indicate one or more attributes of an idealrecipient of a message that is to be sent on behalf of the user. Inembodiments, the system may receive the recipient profile from the user.In some embodiments, the system may determine the recipient profile(e.g., the one or more attributes) based on the message objective and/orone or more attributes of the user.

At 412, the system determines a recipient list based on the recipientprofile and a knowledge graph. In embodiments, the system may identifyindividuals in the knowledge graph having the one or more attributes toobtain the recipient list. In embodiments, the system may generate alead score for individuals having the one or more attributes and mayselect the recipient list based on the lead scores of the individuals.In embodiments, the lead score may be determined using a machine learnedscoring model. In embodiments, the system may include individuals havingthe one or attributes and that are associated with a particular type ofevent (e.g., a change in jobs, a change in management, works for acompany that recently was acquired). In some of these embodiments, thetime that has lapsed between the present time and the event is takeninto consideration when determining the recipient list.

At 414, the system determines, for each individual indicated in therecipient list, entity data, event data, and/or relationship datarelating to the individual or an organization of the individual. Inembodiments, the system may retrieve the event data, entity data, and/orrelationship data from the knowledge graph. For example, the system maybegin with an entity node of the individual and may traverse theknowledge graph from the entity node via the relationships of theindividual. The system may traverse the knowledge graph to identify anyother entities, relationships, or events that are somehow related to theindividual and/or entities that are related to the individual. Forexample, the system may identify information about the individual suchas the individual's organization, the individual's educationalbackground, the individual's, the individual's recent publications, newsabout the individual's organization, news mentions of the individual,and the like.

At 416, the system generates, for each individual indicated in therecipient list, a personalized message that is personalized for theindividual based on the entity data, event data, and/or relationshipdata relating to the individual or an organization of the individual. Inembodiments, the system generates directed content for each individualin the recipient list. The directed content may be based on the entitydata, event data, and/or relationship data relating to the individualand/or the organization of the individual. In embodiments, the systemmay employ natural language generators to generate the directed contentusing entity data, event data, and/or relationship data. In embodiments,the system may employ a generative model to generate the directedcontent based on the entity data, event data, and/or relationship data.In embodiments, the system may, for each individual, merge the directedcontent generated for the individual with the message template to obtaina personalized message.

At 418, the system provides the personalized messages. In embodiments,the system may provide the personalized messages by transmitting eachpersonalized message to an account of the individual for which themessage was personalized. In response to transmitting a personalizedmessage to an individual, the system may receive feedback dataindicating an outcome of the personalized message (e.g., was the messageopened and/or responded to, was a link in the message clicked, was anattachment in the message downloaded. The system may use the feedbackdata to reinforce the learning of one or more of the models described inthe disclosure and/or as training data to train new machine learnedmodels. In embodiments, the system may provide the personalized messagesby transmitting each personalized message to a client device of theuser, whereby the user may approve a personalized message fortransmission and/or edit a personalized message before transmission tothe individual.

Referring now to FIG. 16, an environment of a multi-client serviceplatform 1600 is shown. A multi-client service platform 1600 may referto a computing system that provides customer service solutions for anynumber of different clients. As used herein, a client may refer to anorganization (e.g., a business, a government agency, a non-profit, andthe like) that engages in some form of commercial or service-relatedactivity, whereby the multi-client service platform 1600 may provide acustomized or semi-customized customer service solution to service thecustomers of the client. In embodiments, the platform 1600 is amulti-tenant platform, such that the system serves the needs of multipleclients, who in turn use the system to provide service, support and thelike to their own customers. As used herein, the term “service” shouldbe understood to encompass, except where context indicates otherwise,any of a wide range of activities involved in providing services tocustomers and others, such as via various workflows of a business,including providing services for value, servicing goods, updatingsoftware, upgrading software, providing customer support, answeringquestions, providing instructions of use, issuing refunds or returns,and many others. As used herein, except where context indicatesotherwise, a customer may refer to an entity or individual that engageswith the client (e.g., a purchaser of a product or service of theclient, a user of the client's software platform, and the like), and theterm “customer” should be understood to encompass individuals atdifferent stages of a relationship with a client, such asindividuals/organizations who are being targeted with marketing andpromotional efforts, prospects who are engaged in negotiations withsales people, customers who have purchased a product, and users of theproduct or service (such as individuals within a customer organization).Furthermore, as will be discussed in further detail, the term “contact”is used to describe organizational entities or individuals that doengage with, may engage with, or previously engaged with the client. Forexample, a “contact” may refer to a sales lead, a potential customer, aclosed customer (e.g., purchaser, licensee, lessee, loan recipient,policy holder, or the like), and/or a previous customer (e.g., apurchaser that needs service or may review the organization). In thisway, the platform 1600 may help track a contact through an entirecontact lifecycle (e.g., from the time the contact first comes to theattention of the client as a lead (such as when the client opens apromotional email or clicks on a promotional offer) until the end of thelifecycle of the client's offering(s)). It should be noted that the termcontact may refer to a customer, but also to individuals andorganizations that may not qualify as “customers” or users of a client.

In some embodiments, the platform 1600 may include, integrate with, orotherwise share data with a CRM or the like. As used in this disclosure,the term CRM may refer to 144 sophisticated customer relationsmanagement platforms (e.g., HubSpot® or Salesforce.com®), anorganization's internal databases, and/or files such as spreadsheetsmaintained by one or more persons affiliated with the organization). Insome embodiments, the platform 1600 provides a unified database (e.g., aproprietary database 1620) in which a contact record serves as a primaryentity for a client's sales, marketing, service, support and perhapsother activities, such that individuals at a client who interact withthe same customer at different points in the lifecycle, involving variedworkflows, have access to the contact record without requiring dataintegration, synchronization, or other activities that are necessary inconventional systems where records for a contact are dispersed overdisparate systems. In embodiments, data relating to a contact may beused after a deal is closed to better service the contact's needs duringa service phase of the relationship. For example, a contact of aninvoicing software platform (e.g., the CFO of the company) may haveinitially been entered into a CRM as a lead. The contact may havesubscribed to the software platform, thereby becoming a customer. Thecontact (or another contact affiliated with the client) may later havean issue using a particular feature of the invoicing software and mayseek assistance. The platform 1600 may provide a customer servicesolution on behalf of the invoicing software, whereby the platform 1600may, for example, provide one or more interfaces or means to requestservice. Upon receiving a service request from the contact, the platform1600 may have access to data relating to the contact from the time thecontact was a lead through the service period of the relationship. Inthis way, the platform 1600 may have data relating to the communicationsprovided to the contact when the contact was just a lead, when the dealwas closed, and after the deal closed. Furthermore, the platform 1600may have information regarding other contacts of the client, which maybe useful to addressing a customer-service related issue of the contact.

In embodiments, a client, via a client device 1640, may customize itscustomer service solution, such that the customer-service solution istailored to the needs of the client and its customers. In embodiments, aclient may select one or more customer service-related service features(or “service features” or “services”) and may provide one or morecustomization parameters corresponding to one or more of the servicefeatures. Customization parameters can include customized ticketattributes, service-related content (or “content”) to be used in thecourse of customer service, root URLs for populating a knowledge graph1622, customer service workflows (or “workflows”), and the like. Forexample, a client, via the client device 1640, may provide selections ofone or more features and capabilities enabled in the platform 1600 asdescribed throughout this disclosure (e.g., automated content generationfor communications, automated chat bots, AI-generated follow up emails,communication integration, call routing to service experts, and thelike) via a graphical user interface (e.g., drop-down menu, a button,text box, or the like). A client, via the client device 1640, may alsouse the platform 1600 to find and provide content that may be used tohelp provide service or support to its contacts (e.g., articles thatanswer frequency asked questions, “how-to” videos, user manuals, and thelike) via a graphical user interface (e.g., an upload portal). Theclient may further provide information relating to the updated content,such as descriptions of the content, a topic heading of the content, andthe like. This can be used to classify the media content in a knowledgegraph as further described throughout this disclosure, and ultimately tohelp identify content that is relevant to a customer service issue,support issue, or the like. A client may additionally or alternativelydefine one or more customer service workflows via a graphical userinterface (e.g., a visualization tool that allows a user to define acustomer service workflows of the organization). A service workflow maydefine a manner by which a particular service-related issue or set ofservice related issues are to be handled by a client-specific servicesystem (e.g., the system 1900 of FIG. 19). For example, a serviceworkflow for a particular client may define when a customer should beprovided a link to content (e.g., useful articles or FAQs) to help thecontact solve an issue, when a client is to be routed to a human serviceexpert, when to send a technician, when to send follow-upcommunications, and the like). In embodiments, a workflow may be definedwith respect to a ticket pipeline. The platform 1600 may utilize theclient's customization parameters to deploy a client-specific customerservice system (discussed in greater detail with respect to FIG. 19). Inthis way, the customer service offerings of each respective client maybe tailored to the business of the client, rather than aone-size-fits-all solution for all clients, irrespective of theirbusiness needs.

The platform 1600 provided herein enables businesses to undertakeactivities that encourage growth and profitability, including sales,marketing and service activities. Among other things, as a user of theplatform, a business user is enabled to put customer service at a highlevel of priority, including to recruit the business user's customers tohelp in the growth of the business. In embodiments, enabling customerservice involves and enables various interactions among activities of abusiness user that involve service, marketing, sales, among otheractivities. In some embodiments, the platform 1600 is configured tomanage and/or track customer service issues using customer-servicetickets (also referred to as “tickets”). A ticket may be a datastructure that corresponds to a specific issue that needs to beaddressed for a contact by or on behalf of the client. Put another way,a ticket may correspond to a service-related process, or any otherprocess or workflow that has a defined start and finish (e.g.,resolution). For example, a particular type of ticket used to support anon-line shopping client may be issued when a contact has an issue with apackage not being received. A ticket in this example would relate to anissue with the delivery of the contact's package. The ticket may remainunresolved until the contact receives the package, is refunded, or thepackage is replaced. Until the ticket is resolved, the ticket may remainan open ticket, despite the number of times the contact interacts withthe system.

In embodiments, tickets may have attributes. The attributes may includedefault attributes and/or custom attributes. Default ticket attributesare attributes that are included in any ticket issued by the platform1600. Custom attributes are attributes that are selected or otherwisedefined by a client for inclusion in tickets issued on behalf of theclient. A client may define one or more different types of tickets thatare used in the client's client-specific service system. Examples ofdefault ticket attributes, according to some implementations of theplatform 1600, may include (but are not limited to) one or more of aticket ID or ticket name attribute (e.g., a unique identifier of theticket), a ticket priority attribute (e.g., high, low, or medium) thatindicates a priority of the ticket, a ticket subject attribute (e.g.,what is the ticket concerning), a ticket description (e.g., a plain-textdescription of the issue to which the ticket pertains) attribute, apipeline ID attribute that indicates a ticket pipeline to which theticket is assigned, a pipeline stage attribute that indicates a statusof the ticket with respect to the ticket pipeline in which it is beingprocessed, a creation date attribute indicating when the ticket wascreated, a last update attribute indicating a date and/or time when theticket was last updated (e.g., the last time an action occurred withrespect to the ticket), a ticket owner attribute that indicates thecontact that initiated the ticket, and the like. Examples of customticket attributes are far ranging, as the client may define the customticket attributes, and may include a ticket type attributing indicatinga type of the ticket (e.g., service request, refund request, lost items,etc.), a contact sentiment attribute indicating whether a sentimentscore of a contact (e.g., whether the contact is happy, neutral,frustrated, angry, and the like), a contact frequency attributeindicating a number of times a contact has been contacted, a media assetattribute indicating media assets (e.g., articles or videos) that havebeen sent to the contact during the ticket's lifetime, and the like.

In embodiments, the platform 1600 includes a client configuration system1602, a ticket management system 1604, a conversation system 1606, amachine learning system 1608, a feedback system 1610, a proprietarydatabase 1620, a knowledge graph 1622, and a knowledge base 1624. Theplatform 1600 may include additional or alternative components withoutdeparting from the scope of the disclosure. Furthermore, the platform1600 may include, be integrated with or into, or communicate with thecapabilities of a CRM system and/or other enterprise systems, such asthe content development platform 100 and/or directed content system 200described in the disclosure. In some embodiments, the platform 1600enables service and/or support as well as at least one of sales,marketing, and content development, with a common database (or set ofrelated databases) that has a single contact record for a contact.

In embodiments, the client configuration system 1602 allows a client(e.g., a user affiliated with a client) to customize a client-specificservice system, and configures and deploys the client-specific servicesystem based on the client's customizations. In embodiments, the clientconfiguration system 1602 presents a graphical user interface (GUI) to aclient user via a client device 1630. In embodiments, the GUI mayinclude one or more drop down menus that allows users to selectdifferent service features (e.g., chat bots, automated follow upmessages, FAQ pages, communication integration, and the like).Alternatively, a user affiliated with a client may select one ofmultiple packages (e.g., “basic”, “standard”, “premium”, or“enterprise”), where each package includes one or more service featuresand is priced accordingly. In these embodiments, the service features ina respective package may be cumulative, overlapping, or mutuallyexclusive. In scenarios where the packages are mutually exclusive, aclient may select multiple packages.

Once a service feature is selected, a user affiliated with the clientmay begin customizing one or more aspects of the service feature(assuming that the selected service feature is customizable). It shouldbe noted that some service features allow for heavy customization (e.g.,workflow definitions, pipeline definitions, content uploads, emailtemplates, conversation scripting, and the like), while other servicefeatures do not allow for any customization or for minimal customization(e.g., custom logos).

In embodiments, the client configuration system 1602 is configured tointerface with the client devices 1640 to receive customizationparameters from respective clients corresponding to selected servicefeatures. As mentioned, customization parameters may include ticketattributes for client-specific tickets, service-related content (alsoreferred to as “content” or “media assets”) to be used in the course ofcustomer service, root URLs for populating the knowledge graph 1622,ticket pipeline definitions, customer service workflows (or “workflows”)definitions, communication templates and/or scripts, and the like.

In embodiments, the client configuration system 1602 is configured toallow a client (e.g., a user affiliated with a client) to configure oneor more different types of tickets that are used to record, document,manage, and/or otherwise facilitate individual customer service-relatedevents issued by contacts of the client. For example, a client cancustomize one or more different types of tickets and, for each differenttype of ticket, the custom ticket attributes of the ticket. Inembodiments, the client configuration system 1602 presents a GUI to auser affiliated with the client via the client device 1640 that allows auser to configure ticket objects, which are used to generate instancesof tickets that are configured according to the client's specifications.The user may command the client configuration system 1602 to create anew ticket object, via the GUI. In doing so, the client may define, forexample, the type of ticket, the different available priority levels, apipeline that handles the ticket, and/or other suitable information. Forexample, using a menu or a text input box, the user can designate thetype of ticket (e.g., “refund request ticket”) and the differentavailable priority levels (e.g., low or high). In embodiments, theclient configuration system 1602 may allow a user to designate apipeline to which the ticket is assigned. Alternatively, the pipelinemay be defined in a manner, such that the ticket management system 1604listens for new tickets and assigns the ticket to various pipelinesbased on the newly generated ticket and information entered in by theuser.

In embodiments, the user may further configure a ticket object byadding, removing, modifying, or otherwise updating the custom attributesof the ticket object. In embodiments, the GUI presented by the clientconfiguration system 1602 may allow the user to define new attributes.The GUI may receive an attribute name and the variable type of theattribute (e.g., an integer, a flag, a floating point, a normalizedscore, a text string, maximum and minimum values, etc.) from the uservia the GUI (e.g., using a menu and/or a text input box). Inembodiments, the GUI may allow the user to define the manner by whichthe attribute value is determined. For example, the user may designatethat a value of an attribute may be found in a specific field or fieldsof a specific database record, answers from the client in a live chat orchat bot transcript (e.g., extracted by an NLP system), and the like.The ticket management system 1604 may utilize such definitions topopulate the attributes of new ticket instances generated from theticket object. The GUI may allow a user to modify or otherwise edit theattributes of the ticket. For example, a user may rename a ticket type,add or delete attribute types, modify the data types of the differentticket attributes, and the like.

In some examples, in configuring a knowledge base of a client-specificservice system, the client configuration system 1602 may present a GUIthat allows users to upload articles, videos, tutorials, and othercontent. A knowledge base may refer to a collection of articles, videos,sound records, or other types of content that may be used to assist acontact when dealing with an issue. The contents in a knowledge base maybe provided to a contact in a variety of different manners, including bya customer-service specialist (e.g., during a live chat or in afollow-up email), by a chat bot, or from a help page (e.g., a webpagehosted by the platform 1600 or the client's website). In someembodiments, the GUI allows a user to designate one or more root URLsthat allow the platform 1600 to crawl a website for media assets and/orretrieve media assets. In some embodiments, the client configurationsystem 1602 may utilize the root URL to generate the knowledge graph1622 (or portion thereof) that references the media assets used inconnection with a client's service system. In some embodiments, the GUImay further allow a user to define topic headings to which the contentis relevant or directed. For example, the user may provide the topicsvia a text string or may select topics from a menu or series ofhierarchical menus. In embodiments, the topic headings may be used toorganize the uploaded content in the client's help page and/or to assistin selection of the content when assisting a contact.

In another example, the client configuration system 1602 may present aGUI that includes a pipeline definition element. In embodiments, apipeline definition element allows a user to visually create a ticketpipeline. In some of these embodiments, the GUI may allow a user todefine one or more stages of a ticket pipeline, and for each stage inthe pipeline, the user may further define zero or more workflows thatare triggered when the ticket reaches the particular stage in thepipeline. In embodiments, the user may define the various stages of aticket pipeline and may define the attributes (and values thereof) of aticket that corresponds to each stage. For example, the user may definea new ticket stage and may define that the ticket should be in the newticket stage when a new ticket is generated but before any furthercommunications have been made to the contact. The user may then define asecond stage that indicates the ticket is waiting for further responsefrom the client and may further define that the ticket should be in the“waiting for contact” stage after a new ticket notification has beensent to the client, but before the client has responded to the request(which may be part of the client's customer service requirements). Theuser may configure the entire pipeline in this manner.

In embodiments, the client configuration system 1602 may allow a user tocreate new and/or update workflows by defining different service-relatedworkflow actions (also referred to as “actions”) and conditions thattrigger those actions. In some embodiments, a workflow may be definedwith respect to a ticket. For example, the user affiliated with a cableor internet service provider (or “ISP”) can define an action thatnotifies a customer when a new ticket is generated (e.g., generates andsends an email to the user that initiated the ticket). In this example,the GUI may be configured to allow the user to define the type or typesof information needed to trigger the condition and/or other types ofinformation that may be requested from the customer before triggeringthe email (e.g., the nature of the problem or reason for calling). TheGUI may also allow the user to provide data that may be used to generatethe email, such as an email template that is used to generate the email.Continuing this example, the user may define another action that routesthe user to a human service specialist and one or more conditions thatmay trigger the action, such as unresolved issues or client requests.The user can add the action and conditions to the workflow, such thatwhen the condition or conditions are triggered, the customer is routedto a live service specialist.

The client configuration system 1602 may allow a user affiliated with aclient to configure other service features without departing from thescope of the disclosure. For example, in embodiments, the clientconfiguration system 1602 may allow a user to upload one or more scriptsthat a chat bot may utilize to communicate with contacts. These scriptsmay include opening lines (e.g., “hello, how may we assist you today”)and a decision tree that defines dialog in response to a response fromthe contact (or lack of response). In some embodiments, the decisiontree may designate various rules that trigger certain responses, wherebythe rules may be triggered as a result of natural language processing ofinput received from the contact.

FIGS. 37-44 have been provided for examples of a manner by which aclient may provide certain customization parameters to the platform 1600via a graphical user interface (GUI). For example, FIGS. 37-38illustrate examples of GUIs that allow users to upload content to theplatform 1600 for inclusion in the knowledge graph 1622 that may be usedin connection with a client specific service system. In the GUI 3700presented in FIG. 37, a user may provide a root URL via the GUI 3700,whereby the root URL may be used by the platform 1600 to crawl and/orextract information from a series of webpages starting with the webpageindicated by the root. The GUI 3700 may further allow the user todesignate a language that the knowledge graph will support. The GUI 3800of FIG. 38 allows a user to customize a support page that is deployed onbehalf of the client. In embodiments, the GUI 3800 may allow the user toprovide customizations for a desktop-based browser, a tablet-basedbrowser, and/or a mobile-based browser. In embodiments, the GUI 3800 mayallow the user to upload or otherwise provide an icon that appears inthe browser tab of a contact landing on the client's support page and/ora logo of the client that is presented in the support page or otherrelated pages. In this example, the GUI presents a preview of theclient's support page, which includes a search bar, topic headers, andarticles that link to content (e.g., articles and/or videos). Inembodiments, a user may define the topic headers via the GUI and mayselect/upload the content to include with respect to each topic header.FIG. 39 illustrates a GUI 3900 for viewing analytics data related touploaded content (e.g., how many views of the article and the averageamount of time spent viewing the article). In this example GUI, a usercan view analytics related to articles or other media assets (e.g.,videos) that relate to customer service. In this way, a client candetermine whether its contacts are clicking on the presented contentand, if so, how engaged the average contact is by a respective mediaasset.

FIGS. 40-44 illustrate examples of GUI 4000 that allow a user of aclient to customize service workflows of the client with respect to aticket pipeline. In the example of FIG. 40, the GUI 4000 presents aticket pipeline that defines a set of triggering conditions thatautomate the processing of a ticket, such as the ticket reaching a “newticket” status when a customer initiates a new ticket, a ticket reaching“waiting on contact” status when customer is expected to make contactwith the client, a “waiting on us” status when the client is expected totake action to close the ticket, and a “closed” status when the ticketis closed. The foregoing statuses are provided for a non-limitingexample of a ticket pipeline. For each status, the user is presentedwith the option of defining a workflow when a ticket is in that status.In FIG. 41, the user has elected to define a workflow with respect tothe “new” ticket status. The user is presented with a menu that allowsthe user to create a new custom task or to automatically send a ticketnotification (e.g., an email indicating the generation of a new ticket).The example of FIG. 42, the GUI 4000 presents a menu with additionaloptions that are organized based on the action type, whereby the usercan select an action from a set of actions presented in the menu. Theexample menu of actions includes creating a new task, sending a ticketnotification, adding a delay, creating a task, sending an internalemail, sending an internal SMS, sending an internal SMS message, and thelike. In the example of FIG. 43, the user has selected the ticketnotification action. In response to the selection, the GUI 4000 presentsthe user with the option to draft an email template. In the example, theuser provides the email template, including template fields such as“Ticket ID” that may be populated with the ticket ID of the newlygenerated ticket. In the example of FIG. 44, the user has created aworkflow action with respect to the new ticket status. The GUI 4000displays the workflow action with respect to the corresponding newticket status.

The example GUIs of FIGS. 37-44 are provided as non-limiting examples ofGUIs that allow a user to define example customization parameters. Theclient configuration system 1602 may allow a user to customizeadditional or alternative service features, some of which are describedin greater detail below.

Referring back to FIG. 16, in embodiments, in response to receiving aclient's customization parameters, the client configuration system 1602may configure and deploy a client-specific service system. Inembodiments, the platform 1600 implements a microservices architecture,whereby each client-specific service system may be configured as acollection of coupled services. In embodiments, the client configurationsystem 1602 may configure a client-specific service system datastructure that defines the microservices that are leveraged by aninstance of the client-specific service system data structure (which isa client-specific service system). A client-specific service system datastructure may be a data structure and/or computer readable instructionsthat define the manner by which certain microservices are accessed andthe data that is used in support of the client-specific service system.For example, the client-specific service system data structure maydefine the microservices that support the selected service features andmay include the mechanisms by which those microservices are accessed(e.g., API calls that are made to the respective microservices and thecustomization parameters used to parameterize the API calls). The clientconfiguration system 1602 may further define one or more databaseobjects (e.g., contact records, ticket records, and the like) from whichdatabase records (e.g., MySQL™ database records) are instantiated. Forexample, the client configuration system 1602 may configure ticketobjects for each type of ticket, where each ticket object defines theticket attributes included in tickets having the type. In embodiments,the client configuration system may include any software libraries andmodules needed to support the service features defined by the client inthe client-specific service system data structure. The client-specificservice system data structure may further include references to theproprietary database 1620 and/or the knowledge graph 1622, such that adeployed client-specific service system may have access to theproprietary database 1620 and the knowledge graph 1622.

In embodiments, the client configuration system 1602 may deploy aclient-specific service system based on the client-specific servicesystem data structure. In some of these embodiments may instantiate aninstance of the client-specific service system from the client-specificservice system data structure, whereby the client-specific servicesystem may begin accessing the microservices defined in theclient-specific service system data structure. In some of theseembodiments, the instance of the client-specific service system is acontainer (e.g., a Docker® container) and the client-specific servicesystem data structure is a container image. In these embodiments, thecontainer is configured to access the microservices, which may becontainerized themselves.

In embodiments, the ticket management system 1604 manages variousaspects of a ticket. The ticket management system 1604 may generate newtickets, assign tickets to new tickets to respective ticket pipelines,manage pipelines including updating the status of tickets as the ticketmoves through the various stages of its lifecycle, managing workflows,and the like. In some embodiments, the ticket management system 1604 isimplemented as a set of microservices, where each microservice performsa respective function.

In embodiments, the ticket management system 1604 is configured togenerate a new ticket on behalf of a client-specific service system. Insome of these embodiments, the ticket management system 1604 may listenfor requests to generate a new ticket (e.g., an API call requesting anew ticket). The request may include information needed to generate thenew ticket, including a ticket type, a subject, a description, a contactidentifier, and/or the like. The request may be received in a number ofdifferent manners. For example, a request may be received from a contactrequest (e.g., a contact fills out a form from the client's website or awebsite hosted by the platform 1600 on behalf of the client), a chat bot(e.g., when a contact raises a specific issue in a chat with the chatbot), via a customer service specialist (e.g., the client calls aservice specialist and the service specialist initiates the request),and the like. In response to receiving a ticket request, the ticketmanagement system 1604 generates a new ticket from a ticket objectcorresponding to the ticket type. The ticket management system 1604 mayinclude values in the ticket attributes of the ticket based on therequest, including the ticket type attribute, the subject attribute, thedescription attribute, the date/time created attribute (e.g., thecurrent date and/or time), the last update attribute (e.g., the currentdate and/or time), the owner attribute (e.g., the contact identifier),and the like. Furthermore, in some embodiments, the ticket managementsystem 1604 may assign a ticket to a ticket pipeline of theclient-specific service system and may update the pipeline attribute toindicate the ticket pipeline to which it was assigned and the statusattribute to indicate the status of the ticket (e.g., “new ticket”). Inembodiments, the ticket management system 1604 may store the new ticketin the proprietary database 1620 (e.g., a ticket database).

In embodiments, the ticket management system 1604 manages ticketpipelines and triggers workflows defined in the ticket pipelines. Insome embodiments, the ticket management system 1604 is configured tomanage the ticket pipelines and trigger workflows using a multi-threadedapproach. In embodiments, the ticket management system 1604 deploys aset of listening threads that listen for tickets having a certain set ofattribute values. In these embodiments, each time a ticket is updated inany way (e.g., any time a ticket attribute value is newly defined oraltered), each listening thread determines whether the attribute valuesindicated in the updated ticket are the attribute values that thelistening thread is listening for. If the listening thread determinesthat the attribute values indicated in the updated ticket are theattribute values that the listening thread is listening for, thelistening thread may add the ticket to a ticket queue corresponding tothe listening thread. For example, a listening thread may listen fortickets having a ticket attribute that indicates that a communicationwas sent to a contact requesting further information. In response toidentifying a ticket having a ticket attribute that indicates that thecommunication was sent to the contact, the listening thread may add theticket to the ticket queue. Once in the ticket queue, the ticketmanagement system 1604 may update the ticket status attribute of theticket, and may trigger one or more workflows defined with respect tothe ticket status. For example, a workflow may trigger theclient-specific system to schedule a follow up email if no response isreceived from the contact within a period of time (e.g., three days).

In some embodiments, the ticket management system 1604 manages workflowson behalf of a client-specific service system. In some embodiments, theticket management system 1604 is configured to manage workflows using amulti-threaded approach. In embodiments, the ticket management system1604 deploys a set of workflow listening threads that listen for ticketshaving a certain set of attribute values. In these embodiments, eachtime a ticket is updated in any way (e.g., any time a ticket attributevalue is newly defined or altered), each workflow listening threaddetermines whether the attribute values indicated in the updated ticketare the attribute values that the workflow listening thread is listeningfor. If the workflow listening thread determines that the attributevalues indicated in the updated ticket are the attribute values that theworkflow listening thread is listening for, the listening thread may addthe ticket to a ticket queue corresponding to the workflow listeningthread. Once a ticket is added to a ticket queue corresponding to theworkflow listening thread, the ticket management system 1604 may executethe workflow with respect to the ticket. For example, during aconversation with a chat bot, a workflow listening thread may listen fora sentiment attribute value that indicates that the contact isfrustrated. When the chat bot (e.g., using NLP) determines that thecontact is frustrated (e.g., the sentiment score is below or above athreshold), the chat bot may update the sentiment attribute of a ticketcorresponding to the contact to indicate that the contact is frustrated.In response, a workflow listening thread may identify the ticket and addit to its queue. Once in the queue, the workflow may define actions thatare to be performed with respect to the ticket. For example, theworkflow may define that the ticket is to be routed to aservice-specialist. In this example, the contact may be routed to aservice-specialist, which may include updating the status of the ticketand providing any relevant ticket data to the service-specialist via aservice-specialist portal.

In embodiments, the conversation system 1606 is configured to interactwith a human to provide a two-sided conversation. In embodiments, theconversation system 1606 is implemented as a set of microservices thatcan power a chat bot. The chat bot may be configured to leverage ascript that guides a chat bot through a conversation with a contact. Asmentioned, the scripts may include a decision tree that includes rulesthat trigger certain responses based on an understanding of input (e.g.,text) received from a user. For example, in response to a contactindicating a troubleshooting step performed by the contact, the scriptmay define a response to output to the contact defining a next step toundertake. In some embodiments, the rules in a script may furthertrigger workflows. In these embodiments, the chat bot may be configuredto update a ticket attribute of a ticket based on a trigged rules. Forexample, in response to identifying a troubleshooting step performed bythe contact, the chat bot may update a ticket corresponding to thecontact indicating that the client had unsuccessfully performed thetroubleshooting step, which may trigger a workflow to send the contactan article relating to another troubleshooting step from the client'sknowledge base.

In embodiments, the conversation system 1606 may be configured toimplement natural language processing to effectuate communication with acontact. The conversation system 1606 may utilize machine learned models(e.g., neural networks) that are trained on service-relatedconversations to process text received from a contact and extract ameaning from the text. In embodiments, the models leveraged by theconversation system 1606 can be trained on transcripts of customerservice live chats, whereby the models are trained on both what thecustomer is typing and what the customer service specialist is typing.In this way, the models may determine a meaning of input received from acontact and the chat bots may provide meaningful interactions with acontact based on the results of the natural language processing and ascript.

In embodiments, the conversation system 1606 is configured to relate theresults of natural language processing with actions. Actions may referto any process undertaken by a system. In the context of customerservice, actions can include “create ticket,” “transfer contact to aspecialist,” “cancel order,” “issue refund,” “send content,” “scheduledemo,” “schedule technician,” and the like. For example, in response tonatural language processing speech of a contact stating: “I will notaccept the package and I will just send it back,” the conversationsystem 1606 may trigger a workflow that cancels an order associated withthe contact and may begin the process to issue a refund.

In embodiments where the platform 1600 supports audible conversations,the conversation system 1606 may include voice-to-text andtext-to-speech functionality as well. In these embodiments, theconversation system 1606 may receive audio signals containing the speechof a contact and may convert the contact's speech to a text or tokenizedrepresentation of the uttered speech. Upon formulating a response to thecontact, the conversation system 1606 may convert the text of theresponse to an audio signal, which is transmitted to a contact userdevice 1680.

In embodiments, the machine learning system 1608 may be configured toperform various machine learning tasks for of the platform 1600. Themachine learning system 1608 may be implemented as a set of machinelearning related microservices.

In some embodiments, the machine learning system 1608 trains andreinforces models (e.g., neural networks, regression-based models,Hidden Markov models, decision trees, and/or the like) that are used bythe platform 1600. The machine learning system 1608 can train/reinforcemodels that are used in natural language processing, sentiment and/ortone analysis, workflow efficacy analysis, and the like. The machinelearning system 1608 may train models using supervised, semi-supervised,and/or unsupervised training techniques. In embodiments, the machinelearning system 1608 is provided with training data relating to aparticular type of task, which it uses to train models that help performthe particular task. Furthermore, in embodiments, the machine learningsystem 1608 may interact with the feedback system 1610 to receivefeedback from contacts engaging with the platform 1600 to improve theperformance of the models. More detailed discussions relating to variousmachine learning tasks are discussed in greater detail throughout thisdisclosure.

In embodiments, the feedback system 1610 is configured to receive and/orextract feedback regarding interactions with a contact. The feedbacksystem 1610 may receive feedback in any suitable manner. For example, aclient-specific service system may present a contact with questionsrelating to a ticket (e.g., “was this issue resolved to your liking?” or“on a scale of 1-10 how helpful was this article?”) in a survey, duringa chat bot communication, or during a conversation with a customerservice specialist. A contact can respond to the question and thefeedback system 1610 can update a contact's records with the responseand/or pass the feedback along to the machine learning system 1608. Insome embodiments, the feedback system 1610 may send surveys to contactsand may receive the feedback from the contacts in responsive surveys.

In embodiments, the client configuration module 1602 provides a GUI bywhich clients can customize aspects of their respective feedbacksystems. For example, the client configuration module 1602 may allow auser of a client to define events that trigger a request for feedbackfrom a contact, how long after a particular triggering event to waituntil requesting the feedback, what mediums to use to request thefeedback (e.g., text, phone call, email), the actual subject matter ofrespective requests for feedback, and/or the look and feel of therequests for feedback. The user can define surveys, including questionsin the survey and the potential answers for the questions. Examples ofGUIs that allow a client to customize its feedback system are providedbelow.

FIGS. 27-35 illustrate example GUIs 2700, 2900 that allow a usercorresponding to a client to customize different aspects of the client'srespective feedback system. For example, the GUI 2700 allows the user todefine the properties of a contact that is to receive a request forfeedback and when to send the feedback request. For example, FIGS. 27,28, 34, and 35 illustrate examples of the GUI 2700 that allows the userto define the properties of a contact that is to receive a request forfeedback and when to send the feedback request. The GUI 2700 may alsoallow a user to customize the types of questions asked (e.g., score anaspect of the client's business, ask for questions for determining a netpromoter score, follow up questions and the like), the actual content ofthe questions, and the look and feel of the feedback request. Forexample, FIGS. 29-33 illustrate examples of a GUI 2900 that allows auser to customize the types of questions asked, the actual content ofthe questions, and the look and feel of the feedback request.

In embodiments, the feedback system 1610 may be configured to extractfeedback from an interaction with a contact. In these embodiments, thefeedback system 1610 may perform tone and/or sentiment analysis on aconversation with a contact to gauge the tone or sentiment of thecontact (e.g., is the contact upset, frustrated, happy, satisfied,confused, or the like). In the case of text conversations, the feedbacksystem 1610 can extract tone and/or sentiment based on patternsrecognized in text. For example, if a user is typing or utteringexpletives or repeatedly asking to speak with a human, the feedbacksystem 1610 may recognize the patterns in the text and may determinethat the user is likely upset and/or frustrated. In the case of audibleconversations, the feedback system 1610 can extract features of theaudio signal to determine if the contact is upset, frustrated, happy,satisfied, confused, or the like. The feedback system 1610 may implementmachine learning, signal processing, natural language processing and/orother suitable techniques to extract feedback from conversations with acontact.

In embodiments, the proprietary database(s) 1620 may store and indexdata records. In embodiments, the proprietary database(s) 1620 may storecontact records, client records, and/or ticket records. The proprietarydatabase(s) 1620 may store additional or alternative records as well,such as product records, communication records, deal records, and/oremployee records. FIGS. 17A-17C illustrate example high level schemas ofcontact records 1700 (FIG. 17A), client records 1720 (FIG. 17B), andticket records 1740 (FIG. 17C).

FIG. 17A illustrates an example schema of a contact database record1700. In embodiments, the contact data record 1700 may include a contactID 1702, a client ID 1704, a purchase data 1706, ticket IDs 1708, acontact timeline 1710, and a contact data 1712. The contact identifier(“ID”) 1702 may be a unique value (e.g., string or number) that uniquelyidentifies the contact from other contacts. It is noted that in someembodiments the client ID 1704 is specific to a relationship between acontact and a client, whereby the contact may only relate to a singleclient. If a certain individual interacts with multiple clients, thenthe contact may have multiple contact records associated therewith(i.e., one for each client, where the contact is a customer of differentclients (businesses) for the respective products or services of thebusinesses). The client ID 1704 indicates the client to which thecontact corresponds. In embodiments, the client ID 1704 may be areference to the client record 1720. In this way, the client ID 1704defines the relationship between the contact and the client. Thepurchase data 1706 indicates all of the purchases made by the contactwith respect to the client. In embodiments, the purchase data mayindicate the products and/or services purchased by the client and thedates on which such products or services were purchased. In someembodiments, the products and services may be presented by product IDs.The ticket IDs 1708 indicate any tickets that have been issued withrespect to the client. In embodiments, the ticket IDs 1708 include anytickets, resolved or unresolved, that have been issued with respect tothe contact. n other embodiments, the ticket IDs 1708 may only includethe tickets IDs 1708 that are still open.

In embodiments, the contact timeline 1710 includes a timelinedocumenting the contact's interaction with the client. The contacttimeline may include data from the point in time when the contact wassolicited as a lead, when purchases were made by the contact, whentickets were generated on behalf of the contact, when communicationswere sent to the contact, and the like. Thus, the contact data 1712 andthe timeline 1710 provide a rich history of all interactions of thecontact with the client, over the lifecycle of a relationship. As aresult, an individual, such as a salesperson or service professional,can understand and reference that history to provide relevantcommunications. More generally, the contact data 1712 may include anydata that is relevant to the contact with respect to client. The contactdata 1712 may include demographic data (e.g., age and sex), geographicdata (e.g., address, city, state, country), conversation data (e.g.,references to communications that were engaged in with the client),contact information (e.g., phone number, email address, user name), andthe like. Contact data may further include information such as a datethat the contact was entered into the system, lifecycle state (what isthe current relationship with the contact—current customer, lead, orservice only), last purchase date, recent purchase dates, on boardingdates, in-person visit dates, last login, last event, last date afeature was used, demos presented to the contact, industry vertical ofthe contact, a role of the contact, behavioral data, net promoter scoreof the contact, and/or a contact score (e.g., net value of the contactto the client or a net promoter score).

It is noted that in some embodiments, the contact record 1700 may beused across multiple platforms, such that the contact record 1700defines data relevant to the contact through the lifecycle of thecontact (e.g., from new lead and/or buyer through customer service). Inthis way, customer service may be integrated with the sales arm of theclient's business. For example, a contact record 1700 corresponding to awarehouse manager (a contact) that purchased an industrial furnace froman HVAC business (a client) may identify or otherwise reference thedates on which the warehouse manager was first contacted, allcommunications sent between the manager and the HVAC business, a productID of the furnace, and any tickets that have been initiated by thecontact on behalf of the warehouse, and the like. Thus, in someembodiments, the integration of the client's sales and marketing datawith the client's customer service infrastructure allows aclient-specific service system to address issues with a more completeview of the contact's data and reduces the need for APIs to connecttypically unconnected systems (e.g., invoicing system, CRM, contactdatabase, and the like). The foregoing database object is provided forexample. Not all the data types discussed are required and the objectmay include additional or alternative data types not herein discussed.

FIG. 17B illustrates an example schema of a client database record 1720.In embodiments, a client database record 1720 may include a client ID1722 and one or more product IDs 1724. The client ID 1722 may be aunique value (e.g., string or number) that uniquely identifies theclient from other clients. The product IDs 1724 identify/referenceproducts (e.g., goods, services, software) that are offered by theclient. The product ID 1724 of a product may reference a product record(not shown) that includes data relating to the product, includingwarranty data, serial numbers, and the like. The foregoing databaseobject is provided for example. Not all the data types discussed arerequired and the object may include additional or alternative data typesnot herein discussed.

FIG. 17C illustrates an example schema of a ticket database record 1740.In embodiments, the ticket database record 1740 may include a ticket ID1742, a client ID 1744, a contact ID 1746, ticket attributes 1748including a status attribute 1750, and other additional ticket data1752. The ticket database record 1740 stores the types of ticketattributes that may be used to identify, track, and/or manage a ticketissued on behalf of a client. The ticket ID 1742 is a unique value(e.g., string or number) that uniquely identifies a ticket from othertickets. The client ID 1744 is a value that indicates the client withrespect to which the ticket was issued. As can be appreciated, theclient ID 1744 may point to the client record 1720 of a particularclient. The contact ID 1746 indicates the contact that initiated theticket. As can be appreciated, the contact ID 1746 may point to thecontact record 1720 of the contact that initiated the ticket. The ticketattributes 1748 may include or reference any data tied to the ticket. Asdiscussed, the ticket attributes may include default ticket attributesand/or custom ticket attributes. Examples of default ticket attributesmay include a ticket priority attribute (e.g., high, low, or medium), aticket subject attribute (e.g., what is the ticket concerning), a ticketdescription attribute, a pipeline ID attribute, a creation dateattribute, a last update attribute, and the like. The custom ticketattributes may depend on the customizations of the customer. In anexample, the custom ticket attributes may include a ticket typeattributing indicating a type of the ticket (e.g., service request,refund request, lost items, etc.), a contact sentiment attributeindicating whether a sentiment score of a contact (e.g., whether thecontact is happy, neutral, frustrated, angry, and the like), a productID attribute that indicates a product to which the ticket corresponds, acontact frequency attribute indicating a number of times a contact hasbeen contacted, a media asset attribute indicating media assets (e.g.,articles or videos) that have been sent to the contact during theticket's lifetime, and the like. In embodiments, the ticket attributesmay further include the ticket status attribute 1750. The ticket statusattribute 1750 can indicate a status of the ticket. The status may bedefined with respect to the ticket pipeline of the client. For example,example statuses may include: ticket is opened but not acted upon,waiting for customer response, at a chat bot stage, at servicespecialist, at visit stage, at refund state, issue resolved, and thelike. In embodiments, the ticket record 1740 may include additionalticket data 1752. In embodiments, the additional ticket data 1752 mayinclude or reference the specialist or specialists that have helpedservice the ticket (e.g., employee IDs), any notes entered byspecialists, a number of notes entered by the specialists, a list ofmaterials that have been sent to the contact during attempts to resolvethe issue, and the like. In embodiments, the additional ticket data 1752may include references to transcripts of conversations with the contactover different mediums. For example, the additional ticket data 1752 mayinclude or reference conversations had with a bot, over email, in textmessage, over social media, and/or with a customer service specialist.The additional ticket data 1752 may additionally or alternativelyinclude analytics data. For example, the ticket status attribute 1750may include a sentiment or tone of the contact throughout the timeline,feedback from the contact, a contact score of the client, and the like.

In embodiments, the additional ticket data 1752 may include or referencea ticket timeline. A ticket timeline may indicate all actions taken withrespect to the ticket and when those actions were taken. In someembodiments, the ticket timeline may be defined with respect to aclient's ticket pipeline and/or workflows. The ticket timeline canidentify when the ticket was initiated, when different actions define inthe workflow occurred (e.g., chat bot conversation, sent link to FAQ,sent article, transferred to customer service specialist, made housecall, resolved issue, closed ticket, and the like). The ticket timelineof a ticket record 1740 can be updated each time a contact interactswith a client-specific service system with respect to a particularticket. In this way, many different types of information can beextracted from the ticket timeline (or the ticket record in general).For example, the following information may be extracted: How long aticket took to come through the pipeline (e.g., how much time was neededto close the ticket); how many interactions with the system did thecontact have; how much time passed until the first response wasprovided; how long did each stage in the pipeline take; how manyresponses were sent to the contact; how many communications werereceived from the contact; how many notes were entered into the record;and/or how many documents were shared with the contact.

In embodiments, the knowledge graph 1622 structures a client's knowledgebase 1624. The knowledge base 1624 may refer to the set of media assets(e.g., articles, tutorials, videos, sound recordings) that can be usedto aid a contact of the client. The knowledge base 1624 of a client maybe provided by the client (e.g., uploaded by a user via an uploadportal) and/or crawled on behalf of the client by the clientconfiguration system 1602 (e.g., in response to receiving a root URL tobegin crawling). In embodiments, media assets may be assigned topicheaders that indicate the topics to which the media asset pertains. Inthis way, a link to a media asset may be displayed in relation to atopic heading and/or may be used by customer service specialists whenproviding links to a contact seeking assistance with an issue pertainingto the respective topic.

In embodiments where the knowledge graph 1622 structures the clientknowledge base 1624, the knowledge graph 1622 may store relationshipdata relating to the knowledge base 1624 of a client. In embodiments,the knowledge graph 1622 may be the knowledge graph 210 discussed above.In other embodiments, the knowledge graph 1622 may be a separateknowledge graph. In embodiments, the knowledge graph 1622 includes nodesand edges, where the nodes represent entities and the edges representrelationships between entities. Examples of types of entities that maybe stored in the knowledge graph 1622 include articles, videos,locations, contacts, clients, tickets, products, service specialists,keywords, topics, and the like. The edges may represent logicalrelationships between different entities.

FIG. 18 illustrates an example visualization of a portion of theknowledge graph 1622, which is one mechanism among various alternatives(including tables, key-value pairs, directed graphs, clusters, and thelike) for representing objects and relationships among objects handledby the platform 1600, including contact objects, tickets, contentobjects (such as for communications), client objects, timeline objects,and many others. In the example of FIG. 18, the knowledge graph 1622illustrates a segment of information relating to a knowledge base of aclient that includes multiple media assets (e.g., articles). In thisexample, the client is a company called “Content Wizard” that provides aproduct called “App Creator.” Amongst the topics that are relevant toApp Creator are a “content integration” topic and an “app hosting”topic. An article entitled “Emoji Support” is relevant to the “contentintegration” topic, and an article entitled “AWS Support” is relevant tothe “app hosting” topic. The knowledge graph 1622 may organize theclient's knowledge base to reflect these relationships. For example, theknowledge graph 1622 may include a client node 1802 that indicates theclient “Content Wizard” and article nodes 1804 that correspond to the“Emoji Support” article and the “AWS Support” article. Edges 1806between the client node 1802 and the respective article nodes 1804 mayindicate that the articles are part of the client's knowledge base.Furthermore, a product node 1808 corresponding to the “App Creator”product may be connected to the client node 1802 by an edge 1810 thatindicates that Content Wizard sells App Creator. Topic nodes 1812 mayconnect to a product node 1808 via edges 1814 that indicate a topic thatpertains to a product, such that content integration and app hosting aretopics that pertain to App Creator. Furthermore, the topic nodes 1812may be related to the article nodes 1804 (or other media asset nodes) byedges 1816 that indicate an article represented by the article node 1804is relevant to the related topic.

Furthermore, in embodiments, the knowledge graph 1622 may organizeadditional data relating to a client. For example, the knowledge graph1622 may include ticket nodes 1818 and contact nodes 1820. A ticket node1818 may indicate a ticket that was issued on behalf of the client. Acontact node 1820 may represent a contact of the client. In thisexample, the contact node 1820 may be related to a ticket node 1818 withan edge 1822 that indicates the ticket was initiated by the contact(e.g., ticket #1234 was initiated by Tom Bird). The contact node 1820may relate to product nodes 1808 with edges 1824 that indicate thecontact has purchased a respective product (e.g., Tom Bird has purchasedApp Creator). Furthermore, the ticket node 1818 may relate to topic node1812 by an edge 1826 that indicates that the ticket for an issue with atopic (e.g., an issue with content integration). The ticket node 1818may further relate to the article node 1804 with an edge 1828 indicatingthat the article has been tried during the servicing of the ticket. Itshould be appreciated that in these embodiments, additional oralternative nodes may be used to represent different entities in thecustomer-service workflow, (e.g., status nodes, sentiment nodes, datenodes, etc.) and additional or alternative edges may be used torepresent relationships between nodes (e.g., “has the current status”,“most recent sentiment was”, “was contacted on”, “was created on”, “waslast updated on”, etc.).

The knowledge graph 1622 is a powerful mechanism that can support manyfeatures of a client-specific service system. In a first example, inresponse to a service specialist taking a call from the contact for afirst time regarding a particular ticket, the client-specific servicesystem 1900 may display a ticket history to the specialist thatindicates that the user has purchased App Creator, that the contact'sissue is with content integration, and that the contact has been sentthe Emoji Support article. In another example, an automated workflowprocess servicing the ticket may retrieve the ticket node to learn thatthe contact has already been sent the Emoji Support article, so that itmay determine a next course of action. In another example, an analyticstool may analyze all the tickets issued with a particular product andthe issues relating to those tickets. The analytics tool, havingknowledge of the client workflow, may drill down deeper to determinewhether a particular article was helpful in resolving an issue. Inanother example, a chat bot may utilize the knowledge graph to guideconversations with a contact. For instance, in an interaction betweenTom Bird and a chat bot, the chat bot may state: “I see that we've sentyou the Emoji Support article, were you able to read it?” If Tom Birdindicates that he has read it (e.g., “Yes, I have”), the chat bot maycreate a relationship between the article node 1804 and the contact node1820 indicating that Tom Bird has read the article. If Tom Birdindicates that he has not read the article, the chat bot may then sendhim a link to the article, which may be referenced in the knowledgegraph 1622 by, for example, a “web address” entity node.

It is appreciated that the full knowledge graph 1622 may containthousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions of nodes and edges. Theexample of FIG. 18 is a limited example to demonstrate the utility ofthe knowledge graph 1622 in a customer service setting. In embodiments,the platform 1600 can maintain separate knowledge graphs 1614 forseparate clients or may have the knowledge graph 1622 that storesinformation relating to all clients.

The platform 1600 may add information to the knowledge graph 1622 in anysuitable manner. For example, the client configuration system 1602 mayemploy a crawling system and an information extraction system, as wasdescribed in the disclosure with respect to FIG. 11 for example. In someembodiments, a crawling system may be seeded with one or more root URLs,from which the crawling system may begin crawling documents. In theexample GUI 3700 of FIG. 37 (discussed below), a user can enter a rootURL to seed the crawling system. Additionally or alternatively, theclient configuration system 1602 can add information to the knowledgegraph 1622 as it is provided by the client (e.g., via upload and/or API)or learned during operation (e.g., via the interactions with thecontacts or clients). The client configuration system 1602 may implementany suitable ontology for structuring the knowledge graph 1622.Furthermore, the platform 1600 may add new entity types and relationshiptypes to the knowledge graph of the ontology as they are discoveredand/or become necessary.

FIG. 19 illustrates an example of a multi-client service platform 1600deploying at least two separate client-specific service systems 1900. Afirst client-specific service system 1900-1 is deployed on behalf of afirst client and a second client-specific service system 1900-2 isdeployed on behalf of a second client. Each client-specific servicesystem 1900 may be configured according to the client's selected servicefeatures and customization parameters. Thus, the first client-specificservice system 1900-1 may provide a first set of service features, whilethe second client-specific service system 1900-2 may provide a secondset of service features that may be different than the first set ofservice features. As discussed, the platform 1600 may be implementedaccording to a microservices architecture. In these embodiments, eachclient-specific service system 1900 may be configured to access arespective set of microservices. While some microservices will be usedby all client-specific service systems 1900 (e.g., authenticationmicroservices, database services, etc.), other microservices may beaccessed by a client-specific service system 1900 only if the client hasselected service features that are supported by the other microservices.In some of these embodiments, the client-specific service systems 1900may be configured to access a set of APIs that leverage themicroservices of the multi-client service platform 1600.

In an example configuration, a client-specific service system 1900 mayinclude and/or may leverage one or more of a communication integrator1902, a ticket manager 1904, a workflow manager 1906, chat bots 1908,service specialist portals 1910, a machine learning module 1912, ananalytics module 1914, and/or a feedback module 1916. Depending on theservice features selected by a client, a client-specific service system1900 may not include one or more of the foregoing components. Inembodiments, each client-specific service system 1900 may also accessone or more proprietary databases 1620, the knowledge graph 1622, and/orthe knowledge base 1624. In embodiments, each client-specific servicesystem 1900 may have client specific proprietary databases 1620,knowledge graph 1622, and/or knowledge base 1624 that only theclient-specific service system 1900 may access. Alternatively, one ormore proprietary databases 1620, the knowledge graph 1622, and/or theknowledge base 1624 may be shared amongst client-specific servicesystems 1900.

In embodiments, a client-specific service system 1900 may include one ormore APIs that allow the client to integrate one or more features of theclient-specific service system 1900 in the client's websites, enterprisesoftware, and/or applications. For example, a client website may includea chat feature, whereby the chat bot 1908 interacts with a contactthrough a chat bot interface (e.g., a text-based chat client) via an APIthat services the client website.

In embodiments, a communication integrator 1902 integrates communicationwith a contact over different mediums (e.g., chat bots, specialists,etc.), including the migration of the contact from one medium to anothermedium (e.g., website to chat bot, chat bot to specialist, website tospecialist, etc.). In embodiments, the communication integrator 1902 mayaccess one or more microservices of the platform 1600, including themicroservices of the conversation system 1606. For example, in responseto a contact engaging with the client's website, the communicationintegrator 1902 may access a chat bot microservice of the conversationsystem 1606, which then instantiates the chat bot 1908 that effectuatescommunication with the contact via a chat bot interface.

In embodiments, the communication integrator 1902 may be configured todetermine when or be instructed (e.g., by the workflow manager 1906) tomigrate a communication with a contact to another medium, and mayeffectuate the transfer to the different medium. For example, after adetermination that the chat bot 1908 is ineffective in communicatingwith the contact, the communication integrator 1902 may transfer thecontact to a customer service specialist portal 1910, where the contactcan converse with a human (e.g., via a text-based chat client or bytelephone). In embodiments, the communication integrator 1902 mayoperate in tandem with the machine learning module 1912 to determinewhen to migrate a contact to another communication medium. For example,if the machine learning module 1912 determines the text being typed bythe contact indicates a frustration or anger on behalf of the contact,the communication integrator 1902 may instruct a chat bot to send amessage stating that the case is being transferred to a specialist andmay effectuate the transfer. In effectuating the transfer, thecommunication integrator 1902 may provide a snapshot of the contact'sdata and the ticket data to the specialist via, for example, the servicespecialist portal 1910.

In some embodiments, the communication integrator 1902 monitors eachcurrent communication session between a contact and the client-specificservice system 1900. For example, the communication integrator 1902 maymonitor open chat bot sessions, live chats with specialists, phone callswith specialists, and the like. The communication integrator 1902 maythen determine or be instructed to migrate the communication sessionfrom a first medium to a second medium. In embodiments, thecommunication integrator 1902 or another suitable component may monitorthe content of a communication session (e.g., using speech recognitionand/or NLP) to determine that a communication session is to betransferred to a different medium. In the latter scenario, the othercomponent may issue an instruction to the communication integrator 1902to transfer the communication to another medium. In response, thecommunication integrator 1902 may retrieve or otherwise obtaininformation that is relevant to the current communication session,including a ticket ID, contact information (e.g., username, location,etc.), the current issue (e.g., the reason for the ticket), and/or othersuitable information. This information may be obtained from theproprietary databases 1620 and/or the knowledge graph 1622 accessible tothe client-specific service system 1900. The communication integrator1902 may then transfer the communication session to a different medium.In some embodiments, the sequence by which a communication session istransferred (e.g., escalating from a chat bot to a specialist orescalating from a text-based chat to a phone call) is defined in acustom workflow provided by the client. The communication integrator1902 may feed the obtained data to the medium. For example, if beingtransferred to a specialist, the communication integrator 1902 maypopulate a GUI of the specialist with the ticket information (e.g.,ticket ID and current issue), contact information, the ticket status,transcripts of recent conversations with the contact, and/or the like.The communication session may then commence on the new medium withoutthe contact having to provide any additional information to the system1900.

In embodiments, the ticket manager 1904 manages tickets with respect toa ticket pipeline on behalf of the client. In embodiments, the ticketmanager 1904 of a client-specific service system 1900 leverages themicroservices of the ticket management system 1604 of the multi-clientservice platform 1600 to create, modify, track, and otherwise managetickets issued on behalf of the client.

In embodiments, the ticket management system 1604 may create tickets onbehalf of a respective client. The ticket management system 1604 maycreate a ticket in response to a number of different scenarios. Forexample, the ticket management system 1604 may create a ticket when acontact accesses the client's website and reports an issue or makes acustomer service request. In this example, the contact may provideidentifying information (e.g., name, account number, purchase number,email, phone number, or the like), a subject corresponding to the issue(e.g., a high level reason for initiating the ticket), and a descriptionof the issue. In another example, the ticket management system 1604 maycreate a ticket in response to contact calling or messaging a customerservice specialist with an issue, whereby the customer servicespecialist requests the new ticket. In this example, the customerservice specialist may engage in a conversation (via a text-based chat,a video chat, or a phone call) with the contact and based on theconversation may fill out a ticket request containing identifyinginformation (e.g., name of the contact, account number, purchase number,email of the contact, phone number of the contact, or the like), asubject corresponding to the issue (e.g., a high level reason forinitiating the ticket), and a description of the issue. In anotherexample, the ticket management system 1605 may receive a request tocreate a ticket from a chat bot. In this example, the chat bot mayengage in a conversation (via a text-based chat or a phone call) withthe contact in accordance with a script, whereby the script prompts thecontact to provide identifying information (e.g., name of the contact,account number, purchase number, email of the contact, phone number ofthe contact, or the like), a subject corresponding to the issue (e.g., ahigh level reason for initiating the ticket), and a description of theissue. In response to the contact providing this information to the chatbot, the chat bot may issue a request to create a new ticket containingthe provided information (e.g., using a ticket request template).

In response to a ticket request, the ticket manager 1904 may generate anew ticket based on the information contained in the request. Inembodiments, the ticket manager 1904 may select a ticket object from aset of ticket objects that are customized by the client and may requesta new ticket from the ticket management system 1604 using a microserviceof the ticket management system 1604. For example, the ticket manager1904 may select a ticket object based on the subject corresponding tothe issue. The ticket manager 1904 may provide the request for the newticket to the ticket management system 1604, whereby the ticket manager1904 includes the ticket type, the identifying information, the subject,the description, and any other relevant data with the request. Theticket management system 1604 may then generate the new ticket based onthe information provided with the request and may include additionalattributes in the new ticket, such as a ticket status, a date/timecreated attribute, a last updated attribute, and the like. In creatingthe new ticket and setting the status of the ticket to a new ticket, theticket management module 1604 may add the new ticket to a ticketpipeline of the client.

In embodiments, the ticket manager 1904 may manage one or more ticketpipelines of the client. As discussed, the ticket management system 1604may run a set of pipeline listening threads that listen for changes tospecific attributes of a ticket, whereby when a ticket pipelinelistening thread identifies a ticket having attribute values that it islistening for, the ticket pipeline listening thread adds the ticket to aqueue corresponding to the ticket pipeline listening thread. Once in thequeue, the ticket is moved to a new stage of the pipeline, and thestatus attribute of the ticket may be updated to reflect the new stage.For example, a ticket pipeline of an ISP client may include thefollowing stages: new ticket; in communication with contact;troubleshooting issue; obtaining feedback; and ticket closed. Once theticket is created, it is moved into the new ticket stage of thepipeline. The new ticket stage of the pipeline may include one or moreworkflows that may be performed for tickets in the new ticket stage(e.g., send notification email to contact, assign to a customer servicespecialist, instruct customer service specialist to contact the contact,etc.). As the workflows are executed, the ticket attributes of a ticketmay change, such that a pipeline listening thread may determine that acustomer service specialist has reached out to the contact. In thisexample, the pipeline listening thread may move the ticket into a queuecorresponding to the “in communication with contact” stage of the ticketpipeline.

In embodiments, the workflow manager 1906 performs tasks relating to theexecution of workflows. As discussed, a workflow defines a set ofactions to be undertaken when performing a service-related task inresponse to one or more conditions being met. In some scenarios, aworkflow may be defined with respect to a pipeline stage. In thesescenarios, a workflow may be triggered with respect to a ticket onlywhen the ticket is in the respective stage. Furthermore, a workflowincludes a set of conditions that trigger a workflow (whether theworkflow is defined with respect to a ticket pipeline or independent ofa ticket pipeline). In embodiments, the determination as to whether aworkflow is triggered is based on the attributes of a ticket. Asdiscussed, the ticket management system 1604 may deploy workflowlistening threads that listen for tickets that meet the conditions of aparticular workflow. Upon determining that a ticket meets the conditionsof a workflow (or put another way, a ticket triggers a workflow), theworkflow listening thread adds the ticket to a workflow queuecorresponding to the workflow listening thread.

In embodiments, the workflow manager 1906 may execute workflows and/orfacilitate the execution of workflows of a client. In some embodiments,the workflow manager 1906 may be implemented in a multi-threaded mannerwhere the different threads serve respective workflows. For eachworkflow, the workflow manager 1906 (e.g., a workflow manager thread)may dequeue a ticket from the workflow queue of the workflow. Theworkflow manager 1906 may then perform actions defined in the workflowand/or may request the execution of actions defined in the workflow fromanother component (e.g., a microservice). For example, a client mayconfigure the ticket pipeline to include a workflow where a notificationemail is sent to the contact initiating the contact. Upon a new ticketbeing generated the workflow manager 1906 may retrieve an email templatecorresponding to new ticket notifications, may generate the notificationemail based on the email template and data from the ticket and/or acontact record of the intended recipient, and may send the email to thecontact. In another example, a workflow may define a series of actionsto be performed after a ticket is closed, including sending a survey andfollowing up with the recipient of the survey who does not respondwithin a period of time. In this example, the workflow manager 1906 mayinstruct the feedback module 1916 to send a survey to the contactindicated in the ticket. If the feedback is not received within theprescribed time, the workflow manager 1906 may instruct the feedbackmodule 1916 to resend the survey in a follow up email. The workflowmanager 1906 may perform additional or alternative functions in additionto the functions described in the disclosure without departing from thescope of the disclosure.

In embodiments, the chat bot 1908 may be configured to engage inconversation with a human. The chat bot 1908 may utilize scripts,natural language processing, rules-based logic, natural languagegeneration, and/or generative models to engage in a conversation. Inembodiments, an instance of a chat bot 1908 may be instantiated tofacilitate a conversation with a contact. Upon a contact being directedto the chat bot 1908 (e.g., by the communication integrator 1902), thesystem 1900 may instantiate the new chat bot 1908. The system 1900 mayinitialize the chat bot 1908 with data relating to the contact. Inembodiments, the system 1900 (e.g., the communication integrator 1902)may initialize the chat bot 1908 with a script that is directed tohandle a particular type of conversation, a contact ID of a contact,and/or a ticket ID referencing a ticket initiated by the contact. Forexample, when a contact visits the client's webpage, an instance of achat bot may be instantiated (e.g., by the communication integrator1902), whereby the instance of the chat bot 1908 uses a script writtenfor interacting with contacts coming to the client's page withservice-related issues and a contact ID of the contact if available. Inembodiments, the chat bot 1908 may obtain information from theproprietary database 1620 and/or the knowledge graph 1614 to engage inthe conversation. Initially, the chat bot 1908 may use a script to begina conversation and may populate fields in the script using informationobtained from the proprietary database 1620, the knowledge graph 1622, aticket ID, a contact ID, previous text in the chat, and the like. Thechat bot 1908 may receive communication from the contact (e.g., via textor audio) and may process the communication. For example, the chat bot1908 may perform natural language processing to understand the responseof the user. In embodiments, the chat bot 1908 may utilize a rules-basedapproach and/or a machine learning approach to determine the appropriateresponse. For example, if the chat bot 1908, based on the contact'sticket history asks the contact if he is having an issue with contentintegration and the contact responds by typing “Yes, I can't get emojito show up in my app,” the chat bot 1908 may rely on a rule that states:if no content has been sent to the contact, then send relevant content.In this example, the chat bot 1908 may retrieve an article describinghow to integrate emoji into an application and may send a link to thearticle to the contact (e.g., via a messaging interface or via email).In another example, the chat bot 1908 may provide a ticket timeline tothe machine learning module 1912, which in turn may leverage a neuralnetwork to determine that the best action at a given point is to send aparticular article to the contact. In this example, the chat bot 1908may retrieve the article recommended by the machine learning module 1912and may send a link to the article to the contact. In embodiments, thechat bot 1908 may utilize data from the knowledge graph 1622 to providecontent and/or to generate a response. Continuing the previous exampleabove, the chat bot 1908, in response to determining that the nextcommunication is to include a link to an article, may retrieve (or mayrequest that another component retrieve) a relevant article or videobased on the knowledge graph 1622. Having the topic/type of issue, thechat bot 1908 can identify articles or content that are related to theproduct to which the ticket corresponds that are relevant to thetopic/type of issue. The chat bot 1908 can then provide the content tothe contact (e.g., email a link or provide the link in a chatinterface). In some embodiments, the chat bot 1908 can also use theknowledge graph 1622 to formulate responses to the contact. For example,if the user asks about a particular product, the chat bot 1908 canretrieve relevant information relating to the product from the knowledgegraph 1622 (e.g., articles or FAQs relating to the product). The chatbot 1908 may be configured to understand the ontology of the knowledgegraph 1622, whereby the chat bot 1908 can query the knowledge graph toretrieve relevant data. For example, in response to a question about aparticular product, the chat bot 1908 can retrieve data relating to theproduct using the product ID of the product, and may use its knowledgeof the different types of relationships to find the answer to thecontacts questions.

In embodiments, the chat bots 1908 may be configured to escalate theticket to a specialist (e.g., via the communication integrator 1902)when the chat bot 1908 determines that it is unable to answer a contactsquestion (e.g., the results of NLP are inconclusive) or when the chatbot 1908 and/or based on tone and/or sentiment analysis (e.g., the chatbot determines that the contact is becoming upset, angry, orfrustrated). In embodiments, tone or sentiment analysis can be performedas a part of the natural language processing that is performed on thecontact's communications, such that a tone or sentiment score isincluded in the output of the natural language processing. In theseembodiments, the chat bot 1908 may help conserve resources of a client,by serving as a triage of sorts when handling a ticket. When the ticketis unable to be resolved by the chat bot 1908, a workflow may requirethat the next step is to migrate the conversation to aservice-specialist. In such a situation, the communication integrator1902 may migrate the contact in accordance with the workflow manager'sdetermination. For example, the communication integrator 1902 maytransfer the contact to a service specialist, whereby the servicespecialist communicates with the contact via a live chat and may viewrelevant contact information and/or ticket information via the servicespecialist portal 1910.

The service specialist portal 1910 may include various graphical userinterfaces that assist a service specialist when interacting with acontact or otherwise servicing a ticket of a contact. In embodiments,the service specialist portal may include chat interfaces, visualizationtools that display a specialist's open tickets and/or variouscommunication threads, analytics tools, and the like. Upon a contactand/or ticket being routed to a service specialist, the communicationintegrator 1902 may provide the specialist with all relevant datapertaining to the contact and/or the ticket. The communicationintegrator 1902 may retrieve this information from the proprietarydatabase(s) 1620 and/or the knowledge graph 1622. In an example, thecommunication integrator 1902 may display the ticket timeline of theticket (e.g., when events along the ticket manager 1904 were undertaken)in the service specialist portal 1910, the purchase history of thecontact, any communications with the contact, and/or any content sent tothe contact into a graphical user interface that displays relevantinformation to the specialist.

FIGS. 21-23 illustrates an example service specialist portal GUIs thatmay be presented by the service specialist portal according to one ormore embodiments of the disclosure. In the example of FIG. 21, the GUI2100 displays relevant ticket information to a specialist (or otheruser), as well as information relating to the contact that initiated theticket. The GUI 2100 includes a graphical representation of the ticket'stimeline (e.g., email sent), and detailed notes about different contactpoints with the contact. The GUI 2100 may show the name and informationof a contact, a date on which the ticket was issued, what articles wereopened by a contact with respect to the ticket, communications that wereundertaken with the contact, and the like.

FIG. 22 illustrates a GUI 2200 that may be used to impart relevant datato a service specialist. In the illustrated state, the GUI 2200 is aportal that provides a list of a specialist's assigned tickets. In theexample GUI 2200, the specialist can view recent messages sent orreceived by the specialist, and may drill down into a particularconversation. Upon drilling down into a conversation, the GUI 2200displays relevant information of the contact in relation to a text basedcommunication session with the contact. On the right column of the GUI2200, relevant ticket and contact data are displayed to the specialist,including a name of the contact, a phone number and email address of thecontact, a date on which the contact became a contact, a lifecycle stageof the contact, and links to any tickets that the contact may have open.

FIG. 23 illustrates a GUI 2300 that may be presented to a specialist oranother service-related employee (e.g., a supervisor). The GUI 2300 ofFIG. 23 is a ticket overview GUI 2300. The GUI 2300 displays a set ofopen tickets and where the tickets are with respect to the client'sticket pipeline. In this example arrangement, the specialist orsupervisor can view tickets that are new, tickets that are awaitingcommunication from the contact, tickets that have progressed to theemail stage, tickets that have been resolved, and tickets that have beenclosed. Each ticket assigned to the specialist may be displayed in arespective card, whereby the card provides a synopsis of the ticket(e.g., date created, contact name, and general issue). In this view, aspecialist can click on a ticket card to drill down to view the detailsof a particular ticket. In response to a user selection of a particularcard, the communication integrator 1902 may retrieve a ticket recordcorresponding to the ticket represented by the selected card and mayoutput information relating to the ticket in a GUI (e.g., a GUI 2100 ofFIG. 21)

In embodiments, the machine learning module 1912 may operate to performvarious machine learning tasks related to the multi-client servicesystem 1900. In some embodiments, the machine learning module 1912 maybe configured to leverage the microservices of the machine learningsystem 1608 of the platform, whereby the machine learning system 1608may provide various machine learning related services, includingtraining models for particular clients based on training data orfeedback data associated with the client. In this way, the machinelearning module 1912 may be said to train and/or leverage machinelearned models (e.g., neural networks, deep neural networks,convolutional neural networks, regression-based models, Hidden Markovmodels, decision trees, and/or other suitable model types) to performvarious tasks for the client-specific service system 1900.

In embodiments, the machine learning module 1912 may train and deploymodels (e.g., sentiment models) that are trained to gauge the sentimentand/or tone of the contact during interactions with the system 1900. Themodels may receive features relating to text and/or audio and maydetermine a likely sentiment or tone of the contact based on thosefeatures. For example, a first contact may send a message stating “Heyguys, I really love my new product, but this is broken;” and a secondcontact may send a message stating “Hey, I hate this product.” Based onfeatures such as keywords (e.g., “love,” “broken,” and “hate”), messagestructure, and/or patterns of text, a model may classify the firstmessage as being from a likely pleased contact and in a polite tone,while it may classify the second message as being from a likely angrycustomer and in a direct tone. This information may be stored as anattribute in a ticket record and/or provided to a chat bot or a servicespecialist. Tone and sentiment scores may also be fed to the analyticssystem 1614 and/or feedback system 1616. For example, the analyticsmodule 1914 may utilize tone and sentiment when determining contactscores, which may indicate an overall value of the contact to theclient.

In embodiments, the machine learning module 1912 can train a sentimentmodel using training data that is derived from transcripts ofconversations. The transcripts may be labeled (e.g., by a human) toindicate the sentiment of the contact during the conversation. Forexample, each transcript may include a label that indicates whether acontact was satisfied, upset, happy, confused, or the like. The labelmay be provided by an expert or provided by the contact (e.g., using asurvey). In embodiments, the machine learning module 1912 may parse atranscript to extract a set of features from each transcript. Thefeatures may be structured in a feature vector, which is combined withthe label to form a training data pair. The machine learning module 1912may train and reinforce a sentiment model based on the training datapairs. As the client-specific service system 1900 records newtranscripts, the machine learning module 1912 may reinforce thesentiment model based on the new transcripts and respective labels thathave been assigned thereto.

The machine learning module 1912 can train and/or deploy additional oralternative models as well. In embodiments, the machine learning module1912 can train models used in natural language processing. In theseembodiments, the models may be trained on conversation data ofpreviously recorded/transcribed conversations with customers.

In embodiments, the analytics module 1914 may analyze one or moreaspects of the data collected by the system 1900. In embodiments, theanalytics module 1914 calculates a contact score for a contact that isindicative of a value of the contact to the client. The contact scoremay be based on a number of different variables. For example, thecontact score may be based on a number of tickets that the user hasinitiated, an average amount of time between tickets, the sentiment ofcontact when interacting with the system 1900, an amount of revenueresulting from the relationship with the contact (or the entity withwhich the contact is affiliated), a number of purchases made by thecontact (or an affiliated entity), the most recent purchase made by thecontact, the date of the most recent purchase, a net promoter score(e.g., feedback given by the contact indicating how likely he or she isto recommend the client's product or products to someone else) and thelike. In embodiments, the contact score may be based on feedbackreceived by the feedback module 1916. The contact score may be stored inthe contacts data record, the knowledge graph 1622, and/or provided toanother component of the system (e.g., a chat bot or the servicespecialist portal 1910).

In embodiments, the analytics module 1914 may generate a contact scoreof a contact using a contact scoring model. The contact scoring modelmay be any suitable scoring model (e.g., a regression-based model or aneural network). In embodiments, the analytics module 1914 may generatea feature vector (or any other suitable data structure) corresponding tothe contact and may input the feature vector to the scoring model. Theanalytics module 1914 may obtain contact-related data from the contactrecord of the contact, the knowledge graph, or other suitable sources.The types of contact-related data may include, but are not limited to, atotal amount of revenue derived from the contact, a number of purchasesmade by the contact, an amount of loyalty points (e.g., frequent flyermiles) held by the contact, a status (e.g., “gold status” or “platinumstatus”) of the contact, an amount of time since the contact's mostrecent purchase, a number of tickets that the contact has initiated, anaverage amount of time between tickets from the contact, and/or theaverage sentiment of contact when interacting with the system (e.g., anormalized value between 0 and 10 where 0 is the worst sentiment, suchas angry or rude). In embodiments, the analytics module 1914 maynormalize or otherwise process one or more of the contact-related dataitems. For example, the analytics module 1914 may determine the averagesentiment of the contact and may normalize the sentiment on a scalebetween 0 and 10. The analytics module 1914 may then feed the featurevector to the contact scoring model, which determines and outputs thecontact score of the contact based on the feature vector. Inembodiments, the contact scoring model is a machine learned model thatis trained by the machine learning module 1912. The contact scoringmodel may be trained in a supervised, unsupervised, or semi-supervisedmanner. For example, the contact scoring model may be given trainingdata pairs, where each pair includes a feature vector corresponding to acontact and a contact score of the contact. In embodiments, the contactscore in a training data pair may be assigned by an expert affiliatedwith the client and/or the multi-client service platform 1600.

In embodiments, the analytics module 1914 may also collect and analyzedata regarding the efficacy of certain actions. For example, theanalytics module 1914 may gauge the effectiveness of certain articles orvideos, scripts used by chat bots, models used by chat bots, callshandled by customer service specialists, and the like. In embodiments,the analytics module 1914 may rely on a ticket's timeline and/orfeedback received from the contact (e.g., surveys or the like), and/orfeedback inferred (e.g., sentiment or tone) from the contact todetermine the effectiveness of certain actions in the workflow of aclient. For example, the analytics module 1914 may determine thatcertain workflow actions almost always (e.g., >90%) result in a contactescalating the ticket to another communication medium when dealing witha particular type of problem. In a more specific example, a client thatis an ISP may first provide a contact with an article describing how totroubleshoot a problem, regardless of the problem. The analytics module1914 may determine that when the ticket relates to a detected but weakersignal, contacts almost always escalate the ticket to a specialist. Theanalytics module 1914 may also determine that when the ticket relates tono signal being detected, the troubleshooting article typically resolvesthe ticket.

In embodiments, the analytics module 1914 can be configured to outputvarious analytics related statistics and information to a userassociated with the client. For example, the analytics module 1914 canpresent a GUI that indicates statistics relating to feedback receivedfrom contacts. For example, FIG. 36 illustrates an example of a GUI 3600that displays a breakdown of the net promoter scores of the contacts ofa particular client. FIG. 39 illustrates an example of a GUI 3900 thatdisplays statistics relating to articles in a knowledge graph, which mayindicate the respective usefulness of the individual articles.

In embodiments, the feedback module 1916 is configured to obtain orotherwise determine feedback from contacts. Feedback may be related to apurchase of a product (e.g., a good or service) and/or the customer. Inembodiments, feedback may be obtained directly from a contact using, forexample, surveys, questionnaires, and/or chat bots. The feedbackcollected by the feedback module 1916 may be stored in a contact recordof the contact providing feedback, provided to the analytics module1914, used as training data for reinforcing the machine learned modelsutilized by the client-specific service system 1900, and the like.

In embodiments, the feedback module 1916 may be configured to executefeedback related workflows, such that certain triggers cause thefeedback module 1916 to request feedback from a contact. Examples oftriggers may include, but are not limited to, purchases, repurchases,client visits to the contact, service technician visits, productdelivery, the ticket initiation, ticket closure, and the like. Inanother example, a lack of feedback could be a trigger to requestfeedback. Furthermore, different triggers may trigger different feedbackworkflows (e.g., a first survey is sent to a contact when an issue isresolved over the phone and a second survey is sent to a contact after atechnician visits the contact). A feedback workflow may define when tosend a feedback request to a contact, what medium to use to request thefeedback, and/or the questions to ask to the contact. Customerattributes of the contacts can also be used to determine a feedbackworkflow for a customer. Examples of customer attributes may include,but are not limited to, date the contact became a customer, lifecyclestate, last purchase date, recent purchase date, on-boarding date, lastlogin, last event, last date a feature was used, demos, industryvertical, role, demographic, behavioral attributes, a net promoter scoreof the contact, and a lifetime value.

In some embodiments, the feedback module 1916 may be trained (e.g., bythe machine learning module 1912) to determine the appropriate time totransmit a request for feedback. In embodiments, the feedback module1916 is trained to determine the appropriate communication channel torequest feedback (e.g., email, text message, push notification to anative application, phone call, and the like). In embodiments, thefeedback module 1916 is trained to determine the appropriate questionsto ask in a feedback request.

In embodiments, the feedback module 1916 is configured to extractfeedback from customer communications. For example, the feedback module1916 may analyze interactions with contacts to determine a contact'simplicit and/or explicit feedback (e.g., whether the contact wassatisfied, unsatisfied, or neutral). In an example, the feedback module1916 system may analyze text containing the phrase “this product ishorrible.” In this example, the feedback module 1916 may determine thatthe contact's feedback towards the product is bad.

In embodiments, the feedback module 1916 may be configured to displayfeedback to a user affiliated with the client. The feedback module 1916may present feedback of contacts individually. For example, the feedbackmodule 1916 may display a GUI that allows a user to view the variouscontact providing feedback and a synopsis of the contact (e.g., acontact score of the contact, a name of the contact, and the like). Theuser can click on a particular contact to drill down on their feedback,or a contact profile page. In the example of FIG. 24, an example GUI2400 allows a user to drill down on the feedback of individual contacts.In the example, the user can click on a particular contact and the GUI2400 may display the feedback provided by the contact. FIG. 25 is ascreen shot of the GUI 2500, whereby the contact's feedback is arrangedon a timeline. FIG. 26 is a screenshot of another feedback related GUI2600. In the example of FIG. 26, the feedback data of a contact isdisplayed in a timeline. In this example, the GUI 2600 displaysindividual cards that are related to various feedback events from thecontact. The cards may also display at least a portion of the feedback(e.g., scores, text, and the like). The GUI 2600 further allows the userto view the tickets of the contact, the lifecycle history of thecontact, a contact history of the contact, a last time the contactcontacted the client, and the like.

Referring now to FIG. 20, an example set of operations for deploying aclient-specific service system, according to one or more embodiments ofthe disclosure. The method 2000 may be executed by one or moreprocessors of the multi-client service platform 1600 of FIG. 16, and isdescribed with respect thereto. The method 2000 may be performed byother suitable systems as well without departing from the scope of thedisclosure.

At 2010, the multi-client service platform 1600 receives a request tocreate a new client-specific service system 1900. The request may beinitiated via a graphical user interface presented to a user affiliatedwith the client or by a salesperson affiliated with the multi-clientservice system. The request may include one or more service featureswhich the client would like to incorporate into its client-specificservice system. For example, the client may opt from one or more of aticket support, ticket workflow management, multiple ticket workflows,email/chat and ticket integration, customized email templates, knowledgegraph support, conversation routing, customer service website thatincludes recommended content (e.g., articles or videos on solving commonproblems), a chat bot (text-based and/or audio-based), automated routingto service specialists, live chat, customer service analytics,customized reporting, and the like. A user affiliated with a client mayselect the service features to be included in the client-specificservice system from, for example, a menu or may subscribe to one or morebundled packages that include respective sets of service features.

At 2012, the system may receive one or more customization parameters. Inembodiments, a client user may provide one or more customizationparameters via one or more GUIs. The types of customization parametersthat a client may provide depends on the services that the client hasenlisted. The types of customization parameters may include customticket attributes, client branding (e.g., logos or photographs), rootURLs to generate a knowledge graph on behalf of the client, topicheadings for organizing a client's customer service page, media assetsto be included under each respective topic heading, ticket pipelinedefinitions, workflow definitions, communication templates for automatedgeneration communications, scripts to initiate conversations with acontact using a chat bot, telephone numbers of the client's servicespecialist system, survey questions and other feedback mechanisms,different types of analytics that may be run, and the like.

In embodiments, a client may customize tickets used in itsclient-specific service system. In these embodiments, the client maydefine one or more new ticket objects, where each ticket object maycorrespond to a different type of ticket. For example, a first ticketobject may correspond to tickets used in connection with refund requestsand a second ticket object may correspond to tickets that are used inconnection with service requests. Thus, if defining more than one ticketobject, a client may assign a ticket type to a new ticket object. Inembodiments, a ticket object includes ticket attributes. The ticketattributes may include default ticket attributes and custom ticketattributes. The default ticket attributes may be a set of ticketattributes that must remain in the ticket. Examples of default ticketattributes, according to some implementations of the platform 1600, mayinclude (but are not limited to) one or more of a ticket ID or ticketname attribute (e.g., a unique identifier of the ticket), a ticketpriority attribute (e.g., high, low, or medium) that indicates apriority of the ticket, a ticket subject attribute (e.g., what is theticket concerning), a ticket description (e.g., a plain-text descriptionof the issue to which the ticket pertains) attribute, a pipeline IDattribute that indicates a ticket pipeline to which the ticket isassigned, a pipeline stage attribute that indicates a status of theticket with respect to the ticket pipeline in which it is beingprocessed, a creation date attribute indicating when the ticket wascreated, a last update attribute indicating a date and/or time when theticket was last updated (e.g., the last time an action occurred withrespect to the ticket), a ticket owner attribute that indicates thecontact that initiated the ticket, and the like. Custom ticketattributes are attributes that a user may define, for example, using aGUI. Examples of custom ticket attributes are far ranging, as the clientmay define the custom ticket attributes, and may include a ticket typeattributing indicating a type of the ticket (e.g., service request,refund request, lost items, etc.), a contact sentiment attributeindicating whether a sentiment score of a contact (e.g., whether thecontact is happy, neutral, frustrated, angry, and the like), a contactfrequency attribute indicating a number of times a contact has beencontacted, a media asset attribute indicating media assets (e.g.,articles or videos) that have been sent to the contact during theticket's lifetime, and the like.

In some scenarios, a client may elect to customize one or more ticketpipelines for handling tickets by the client-specific service system1900, whereby a user affiliated with the client may define one or moreticket pipelines. In some embodiments, the multi-client service platform1600 may present a GUI that allows the user to define various workflowstages (e.g., “ticket created”, “waiting for contact”, “routed to chatbot”, “routed to service specialist”, “ticket closed”, and the like).For each stage, the user may define one or more conditions (e.g., ticketattribute values) that correspond to the respective stage. In this way,a ticket meeting the one or more conditions of a respective stage may bemoved to that stage. For each stage of the pipeline, the user may defineone or more workflows or actions that are performed.

In some scenarios, a client may elect to define one or more workflows.The workflows may be defined with respect to a stage of a pipeline orindependent of a pipeline. A workflow may include one or more actions.Thus, a user affiliated with a client may select one or more actions ofa workflow. For example, the user may select actions such as “createticket”, “send message”, “send email”, “route to chat bot”, “route tospecialist”, “define custom action”, and the like. In the instance wherea user elects to define a custom action, the user may provide furtherdetails on how the client-specific service is to respond. For example,the user may select that an article is to be sent to a contact upon aspecific type of problem indicated in a newly created ticket. The usermay further define the conditions that trigger the workflow. Inembodiments, the user may define these conditions using ticket attributevalues that trigger the workflow.

In some scenarios, a client may elect to have the client-specificservice system 1900 generate automated messages on behalf of the clientto contacts in connection with an issued ticket. In these scenarios, auser affiliated with the client may define communication templates thatare used to generate automated messages (e.g., SMS messages, emails,direct messages, and the like) to contact. For example, the client mayelect to have automated messages be sent to contacts at various pointsduring the workflow. The multi-client service platform 1600 may presenta graphical user interface that allows a user to upload or enter themessage template. In response to receiving the communication template,the multi-client service platform 1600 may store the message templateand may associate the template with the workflow item that uses thetemplate.

In some scenarios, the user may provide a root URL to initiate thegeneration of a knowledge base. In response to the root URL (or multipleroot URLs), the system may crawl a set of documents (e.g., webpages)starting with the root URL. In embodiments, the system may analyze(e.g., via NLP and/or document classifiers) each document and maypopulate a knowledge graph based on the analysis.

In some instances, the user may define one or more topic headings, andfor each topic heading may upload or provide links to a set of mediaassets (e.g., articles and/or videos) that relate to the heading. Insome embodiments, the media assets may be used to recommend additionalmedia assets from a series of crawled websites and/or a knowledge graph.For example, the system may identify media assets having a high degreeof similarity (e.g., cosine similarity) to the media assets provided bythe user. In these embodiments, the system may output the recommendedmedia contents to the user, such that the user may select one or more ofthe media contents for inclusion with respect to a topic heading.

In some scenarios, a client may elect to have a client-specific servicesystem provide a chat bot to handle some communications with contacts.For example, a client may elect to have a chat bot handle initialcommunications with service-seeking contacts. In some embodiments, themulti-client service platform 1600 may present a GUI to a useraffiliated with the client that allows the user to upload chat botscripts that guide the beginning of a conversation. The user may uploadadditional or alterative data that assists the chat bot, such astranscripts of conversations with human service specialists, such thatthe chat bot may be trained on conversations that have been deemedeffective (e.g., helped resolve an issue). In response to receiving thescript and/or any other data, the multi-client service platform 1600 maytrain the chat bot based on the script and/or any other data.

In some scenarios, a client may elect to have a client-specific servicesystem 1900 request feedback from contacts during one or more stages ofa workflow. In some embodiments, the multi-client service platform 1600may present a GUI to a user affiliated with the client that allows theuser to design a survey or questionnaire, including any questions andchoices that may be presented to the responder. The GUI may also allowthe user to customize other aspects of the survey or questionnaire. Forexample, the user may provide branding elements that are presented in orin relation to the survey or questionnaire. In embodiments, the user mayfeedback workflows that define when a survey or questionnaire is to besent to a user and/or the communication medium used to send the surveyor questionnaire to a user.

In some scenarios, a client may elect to have a client-specific servicesystem 1900 route contacts to a telephone call with a servicespecialist. In some of these embodiments, a user affiliated with theclient may provide routing data that can route a contact to a servicespecialist. For example, the user may provide a phone number associatedwith a call center or a roster of service specialists and their directphone numbers and/or extensions.

At 2014, the multi-client service platform 1600 may configure aclient-specific service system data structure based upon the selectedservice features and the one or more customization parameters. Inembodiments, the platform 1600 implements a microservices architecture,whereby each client-specific service system may be configured as acollection of connected services. In embodiments, the platform 1600 mayconfigure a client-specific service system data structure that definesthe microservices that are leveraged by an instance of theclient-specific service system data structure (which is aclient-specific service system). A client-specific service system datastructure may be a data structure and/or computer readable instructionsthat define the manner by which certain microservices are accessed andthe data that is used in support of the client-specific service system.For example, the client-specific service system data structure maydefine the microservices that support the selected service features andmay include the mechanisms by which those microservices are accessed(e.g., API calls that are made to the respective microservices and thecustomization parameters used to parameterize the API calls). Theplatform 1600 may further define one or more database objects (e.g.,contact records, ticket records, and the like) from which databaserecords (e.g., MySQL™ database records) are instantiated. For example,the client configuration system 1602 may configure ticket objects foreach type of ticket, where each ticket object defines the ticketattributes included in tickets having the type. In embodiments, theplatform 1600 may include any software libraries and modules needed tosupport the service features defined by the client in theclient-specific service system data structure. The client-specificservice system data structure may further include references to theproprietary database(s) 1620, the knowledge graph 1622, and/or knowledgebase 1624, such that a deployed client-specific service system may haveaccess to the proprietary database 1620, the knowledge graph 1622,and/or the knowledge base 1624.

At 2016, the multi-client service platform 1600 may deploy theclient-specific service system 1900. In embodiments, the multi-clientservice platform 1600 may deploy an instance (or multiple instances) ofthe platform 1600 based on the client-specific service system datastructure. In some embodiments, the platform 1600 may instantiate aninstance of the client-specific service system from the client-specificservice system data structure, whereby the client-specific servicesystem 1900 may begin accessing the microservices defined in theclient-specific service system data structure. In some of theseembodiments, the instance of the client-specific service system is acontainer (e.g., a Docker® container) and the client-specific servicesystem data structure is a container image. For example, in embodimentswhere the client-specific service system data structure is a container,the multi-client service platform 1600 may install and build theinstance of the client-specific service system 1900 on one or moreservers. In these embodiments, the container is configured to access themicroservices, which may be containerized themselves. Once deployed, theclient-specific service system 1900 may begin creating tickets andperforming other customer-service related tasks, as described in thedisclosure.

Custom Object Systems and Methods

A multi-service business platform (e.g., may also be referred to as aframework) may be configured to provide processes related to marketing,sales, and/or customer service for users. The multi-service businessplatform may include a database structure that may have preset or fixedcore objects (e.g., platform may support core objects). For example, thecore objects may include contact objects, company objects, deal objects,and ticket objects. These core objects may be described and definedabove in the disclosure and may be further described and defined in thedisclosure below with respect to the multi-service business platformexample.

Contact objects may be defined as people who may communicate with anorganization (e.g., anyone who may interact with business) such ascustomers or prospective customers of the business (e.g., people who mayconvert on a form, people who contact chat team of business, and/orpeople who met business team at an event). Each contact object may bedefined with properties (e.g., a name of the contact, a phone number ofthe contact, an email address of the contact, a physical address of thecontact, a title of the contact, and the like). Contacts may work atcompanies such that company objects may also be important to representin data. Company objects may be defined as organizations or businessesthat may communicate with a user's organization (e.g., organization ofuser of the multi-service business platform). Each company object mayinclude properties such as a company name, an address of the company(e.g., main location, headquarters, or the like), and other suitableproperties.

A deal object may be defined as opportunities that may be available frominteractions with contacts (e.g., contact objects) and/or companies(e.g., company objects). Deal objects may be defined as and representtransactions that may be typically between two businesses. Each dealobject may include properties such as a sale made by a customer to acompany via a contact. Some examples of deal objects may include theamount of a deal (e.g., deal_amount), an estimated close date for a deal(e.g., estimated_close_date), and a likelihood to close a deal (e.g.,likelihood_to_close). Likelihood to close may be determined from machinelearning. For example, machine learning may be used to take previouslyclosed deals and may create a model around what types of properties(e.g., attributes) and objects may create a highly likely result toclose and then may output values based on this predictive machinelearning.

Ticket objects may be defined as customer requests for support or help(e.g., service ticket that may relate to a service request that may beissued by a company to a user via a contact). Some examples ofproperties for ticket objects may include date ticket was opened (e.g.,date_opened), priority of ticket, last date custom replied to ticket(e.g., last_date_customer_replied), last date rep replied to ticket(e.g., last_date_rep_replied), and the like.

The multi-service business platform may include associations betweencore objects. In some examples, the associations may be a set of coreassociations. For example, each association may be a directedassociation, such that a respective association may define a type ofrelationship from a first object to a second object. For example, anassociation between a contact object and a company object may be “worksfor” such that the contact object “works for” (association) the companyobject. When an instance of the contact object (e.g., the contact objectinstance identifies Bob as a contact) may be associated with an instanceof the company object (e.g., the company object instance may identify“Acme Corp.” as a the company) with a “works for” association, then theindividual indicated by the company object instance may be defined inthe customer databases as working for the company indicated in thecompany object instance (e.g., Bob works for Acme Corp.).

In example embodiments, two objects may be associated using one or moredifferent types of associations and the associations may be directed inboth directions (e.g., association and inverse association). An inverseassociation of the association may be created automatically for everyassociation. For example, the association in one direction may be “worksfor” and the inverse association may be “employs” which may be createdfor the same association automatically. This same association may beviewed from the contact object and viewed from the company object suchthat the association may be defined as the contact object “works for”(association) the company object or the company object “employs”(inverse association) the contact object. The associations may bebetween the same types of objects and/or between different types ofobjects. For example, in continuing the example of the company objectand the contact object, a contact object instance may indicate that thecompany defined by the company object instance may employ the individualdefined by the contact object instance vis-à-vis the “employs”association (e.g., Acme Corp employs Bob) and that the individual worksfor the company vis-à-vis the “works for” association (e.g., Bob worksfor Acme Corp).

In some example embodiments, two objects may have multiple associationsin the same direction. Continuing the example of the contact object andthe company object, a contact object may be associated with a companyobject by a “works for” association, a “previously worked for”association, a “sells to” association, and/or other suitable types ofassociations. Similarly, the company object may be associated with acontact object with an “employs” association, a “previously employed”association, a “buys from” association, and/or other suitable types ofassociations. In this way, different types of relationships betweeninstances of objects may be defined within the customer's databases.

In example embodiments, objects may also have the same object typedirected associations. For example, a contact object may be associatedto itself with one or more directed associations, such as a “issupervised by” association, a “supervises” association, or the like. Forexample, if Bob and Alice may work for the same company and Alice maysupervise Bob, then an instance of a contact object that may define Bobmay be associated with a contact object instance that may identify Alicewith a “is supervised by” association (e.g., Bob “is supervised by”Alice) and/or Alice's contact object instance may be associated withBob's contact object instance with a “supervises” association (e.g.,Alice “supervises” Bob).

In example embodiments, the multi-service business platform may includea system for creating custom objects providing customizability and mayexecute methods in support thereof. For example, the multi-servicebusiness platform may include a customization system that may be used byusers to create custom objects. These custom objects may be created tobe specific to each user's (e.g., client's) business and the customobjects may be used on the multi-service business platform. The abilityto create custom objects within the multi-service business platform mayspeed up development of new types of custom objects for the platform. Insome examples, the customization system may be a separate system fromthe multi-service business platform and may communicate with themulti-service business platform (e.g., via external applicationprogramming interfaces (APIs)).

Custom objects (e.g., may also be referred to as custom objectdefinitions) may be defined as purposely non-prescriptive objects (e.g.,flexible/customizable in contrast from fixed core objects). A user maycreate custom objects relevant to their business and the user's businessneeds (e.g., relevant to a user's business model). The custom objectsmay provide an alternative where objects of interest to businesses maynot fit smoothly within core objects (e.g., not necessarily fit ascontacts, companies, deals, and/or tickets). The user may create customobjects that may be particularly useful to one or more services (e.g.,workflows, reporting) of the multi-service business platform asdescribed in the disclosure. Each custom object or custom objectdefinition may include an object type, properties (e.g., some propertiesmay be set on an instance), and possible associations. In exampleembodiments, custom objects and/or types of custom objects may includeproducts, goods such as devices/machines (e.g., cars, drones, boats,mobile phones, etc. such that these devices/machines custom objects maybe used to track details about ownership, service, cost ofdevices/machines), business services, shipments (e.g., may be used tostore data about fulfillment of orders that may be intended to be sentout), applications (e.g., may be used to store data that tracks progressof an application), projects (e.g., may be used to store data about workor deliverables), locations/stores (e.g., may be used to store granulardata about companies and their many physical locations such as storelocations and/or company headquarters location), customer locations(e.g., may be locations of customers that buy products and/or servicesfrom user's business), events (e.g., may be used to store and trackphysical or online events a company holds), listings (e.g., may be usedto store data about real estate listings for a real estate company),referrals (e.g., may be used to link two things together to notate areferral or referrer), and the like. Some businesses may have uniquerelationships from operating in an agency type model that the businessesmay want to identify, monitor, and/or track using custom objects.

Custom objects may provide users with the ability to model theirbusiness. For example, custom objects may allow users to model their ownversion of contacts, companies, deals, and/or tickets or any other typeof object for their businesses that may allow the users to customizewhat they want for objects and/or object types. The custom objects maybe used with the multi-service business platform such that the upstartof the multi-service business platform may provide various functionalityfor usage of these custom objects. When a user may build a customobject, the user may utilize all services (e.g., features) of themulti-service business platform such that the user (e.g., user'sbusiness) may use these services throughout the multi-service businessplatform towards relevant custom objects that may match user's businessneeds.

In some examples, users may create custom objects with respect tousefulness with services of the multi-service business platform. Forexample, an auto manufacturer user may create car or vehicle customobjects that may fit into the auto manufacturer's business workflows(e.g., workflow automation) that may be used on the multi-servicebusiness platform. In another example, a user may choose to add customobjects that may be particularly useful with reporting service foruser's business needs.

In general, this ability to create custom objects provides increased andimproved customizability across the multi-service business platform.This provides several advantages to the multi-service business platformas described in the disclosure. For example, some advantages may includecustomization for users with respect to their business industry orfield, specific customization towards each user's business itself suchthat one user in a business industry (e.g., car industry) may havedifferent custom object needs with respect to another user in the samebusiness industry, increased speed of development of various new typesof objects by users and by developers of the multi-service businessplatform, etc.

Using a yoga business as an example (e.g., where the user may be a yogabusiness owner), the user may create custom objects towards their yogabusiness (e.g., where the yoga business may include multiple studiosthat may be staffed with multiple instructors that may teach differentclasses that may be taught to students in accordance with theinstructors' respective schedules). In this example, a user (e.g., auser affiliated with the yoga studio or a third-party consultant) maycreate (e.g., via a GUI) a set of custom objects that relate to the yogabusiness, including defining the properties of each custom object. Forexample, the custom objects created may be studio objects, classobjects, instructor objects, student objects, and schedule objects. Eachstudio custom object may include properties such as address of studio,rent of studio, and date when studio opened (e.g., date_opened). Eachclass custom object may include properties such as name of class, priceof class, and schedule of class. Each instructor custom object mayinclude properties such as date when instructor was hired (e.g.,date_hired), latest certification date of instructor (e.g.,latest_certification_date), certification expiration date of instructor(e.g., certification_expiration_date), and number of classes taught byinstructor (e.g., number_of_classes_taught). Each student custom objectmay include properties such as date joined by student (e.g.,date_joined), number of classes attended by student (e.g.,number_of_classes_attended), date last attended a class by student(e.g., date_last_attended_a_class), total lifetime value of student(e.g., total_lifetime_value), credit of student, address of student, andphone number of student.

In example embodiments, the user may also define a set of associationsbetween objects (e.g., custom objects and/or core objects). This yogaexample may include several examples of associations. For example, oneassociation may be “class_taught_by” which may be between the customobject instructor and/or a contact object (e.g., where contact may beinstructor) and the class custom objects that the instructor teaches.Another example association may be “taught_at_location” which may be anassociation between the class custom object and the studio customobjects based on where a particular class may be held (e.g., may bedetermined from address or location information properties of studiocustom objects). In another example, the “taught_at_location”association may be an association between the instructor custom objectand the studio custom objects based on at which yoga studios aparticular instructor teaches. There may be other associations createdbetween instructor custom objects and core objects (e.g., contactobjects) as well as student custom objects and core objects (e.g.,contact objects). This may allow for actions to be taken based on theseassociations such as emails to be sent to instructors and students basedon the associations of instructor custom objects and student customobjects with contact objects.

In example embodiments, machine learning may be used with custom objectsto determine a likelihood to attend based on custom objects andproperties that may be created. For example, the multi-service businessplatform may provide prompts for a user to define inputs into a machinelearning model, e.g., the user may submit via prompts several properties(e.g., how often does student attend, how many classes is student signedup for, subscription plan, etc.) that may impact whether a student maybe likely or unlikely to attend a class and the machine learning modelmay be used to perform calculations based on these inputs. In otherexample embodiments, the machine learning model may determine insights(e.g., properties relating to attendance may be determined) as data maybe received from instances of the occurrence of actions relating toinstances of the custom objects. For example, instances of associationsbetween the object instances (e.g., between custom object instancesand/or core object instances) may be used to determine these properties(e.g., based on properties of the association instances).

Referring now to example implementations of FIG. 45, there is shown anexample environment 500 including a multi-service business platform 510(e.g., may be also referred to as a multi-tenant distributed system thatmay serve the needs of multiple users who in turn use the system toprovide services, support, and the like for their customers). Themulti-service business platform 510 may communicate with varioussystems, devices, and data sources according to example embodiments ofthe disclosure. The multi-service business platform 510 may be referredto as a framework system or a multifunction business platform. Themulti-service business platform 510 may include various systems 502-508,1600, 520, 522-528, 562, 566, services 530, and a storage system 550.Specifically, the multi-service business platform 510 may include acustomization system 520 (e.g., may also be referred to as a customobject creation system or custom object definition system). Thecustomization system 520 may be used in a process to create customobjects and create associations for the custom objects.

These created custom objects may be used with various services 530 ofthe multi-service business platform 510 (e.g., may also be referred toas features of the multi-service business platform). In examples,services 530 may include workflow automation 532 (e.g., workflows),reporting 534, customer relationship management (CRM)-related actions536, analytics 538, import/export actions 540, other actions 542, andthe like. Other actions 542 may include, for example, filtering used tosearch, filter, and list objects (e.g., contact objects) that may beused with other objects and/or create lists for other types of objects.In some examples, other actions 542 may include reporting,permissioning, auditing, user-defined calculations, and aggregations.The multi-service business platform 510 may include a non-exhaustivelist of services 530 (e.g., set of features) that may be changed and/oradded to the multi-service business platform 510 over time such thatthese services 530 may be automatically used with old and new coreobjects and/or custom objects.

The multi-service business platform 510 may be used to provide all ofthe objects (specifically custom objects) with various capabilities fromthese services 530. These various types of services 530 may be appliedand/or used with the objects. For example, the workflow automation 532(e.g., workflow system) may be used to add verbs (automation actions)with respect to nouns (e.g., custom objects). The core objects andcustom objects may take advantage of all these services 530 (e.g.,features) such that there may be a single source of truth (e.g.,objects) that the services 530 and/or other systems of the platform mayreason about that may be built onto the multi-service business platform510.

The storage system 550 may include multi-tenant data store(s) 552,knowledge graph(s) 556, and proprietary data store(s) 554 (e.g.,proprietary databases that may be similar to proprietary databases 208,1620 described in the disclosure). Custom objects and/or core objectsmay include information that may be stored in the multi-tenant datastores 552 of the storage system 550. The custom objects and/or coreobjects as well as possible relationships (e.g., associations) betweenobjects may be stored in an ontology of the knowledge graph(s) 556 atleast implicitly and one or more instance knowledge graphs may beincluded in the knowledge graph(s) 556.

The multi-service business platform 510 may include other systems thatmay be used with the created custom objects such as a customerrelationship management (CRM) system 502, a synchronization system 504,a machine learning system 506, a content management system (CMS) 508,and a multi-client service system 1600 (as described in the disclosureabove). These systems may function and/or be used similarly to the sameor similar systems described in the disclosure. For example, the machinelearning system 506 that may already be used with core objects may alsobe applied similarly to the custom objects. The synchronization system504 of the multi-service business platform 510 may synchronize somearbitrary custom objects outside the platform 510 to objects in theplatform 510. In summary, in examples, the multi-service businessplatform 510 may act as an arbitrary platform that may act on arbitrarycustom objects using various systems 502-508, 1600, 520, 522-528, 562,566 and the services 530 (e.g., used with arbitrary actions and syncedto arbitrary systems of the platform) thereby benefiting from thesevarious capabilities.

The multi-service business platform 510 may communicate with externalsystems and data sources via a communication network 560 (e.g.,Internet, public network, private network, etc.). Specifically, themulti-service business platform 510 may communicate with user device(s)570 (e.g., user may be using the customization system 520 from the userdevice 570 to create custom objects via network 560), client device(s)572 (e.g., tracking various activities of the client device 572 of acustomer for purposes of sales and marketing with respect to customobjects), and various external information sources 580. The externalinformation sources 580 may include company information or data oncustomers, products, sales, third party data, resource descriptionframework (RDF) site summary (RSS) feeds or really simple syndication(RSS) feeds, telemetrics (e.g., from email, websites, app usage), andthe like with respect to custom objects. The multi-service businessplatform 510 may also communicate with third party service(s) 574 (e.g.,third party applications, websites, Snowflake, etc.) via network 560.

The multi-service business platform 510 may also communicate withintegrator device(s) 576. Integrator devices 576 may refer to userdevices used by third-party integrator users that may create and maydefine a series of custom objects that may be integrated with otherobjects in the multi-service business platform 510 and may be offered tousers (e.g., clients) of the multi-service business platform 510. Themulti-service business platform 510 may include APIs (as described inthe disclosure) that a user may use to define custom objects andintegrate those custom objects into the CRM (e.g., CRM system 502) andthereby into the multi-service business platform 510. These same APIsmay be available to integrator users to do the same thing. Theintegrator users may define a series of custom objects, then theintegrator users may define object definitions. When a client installsthat integration, the multi-service business platform 510 may enable theclient (e.g., users of the client) to then start creating instances ofcustom objects defined by the integrator user(s).

Using yoga studio example again, an integrator user may have a companythat builds CRM integration for yoga studios. This company may not be ayoga studio itself but may provide the CRM integration. For example, theintegrator user may define a set of custom objects (includingproperties) that may be used by yoga studios or other fitnessclass-based businesses. The custom objects may include a studio customobject, an instructor custom object, a student custom object, a classcustom object, and a schedule custom object. In this example, any clientof the multi-service business platform 510 that operates a yoga studio(or other fitness, class-based business) may use the custom objectsdefined by the integrator (e.g., for a fee to the integrator) whenon-boarding their business to the multi-service business platform 510.For example, the yoga studio users (e.g., from yoga studio businesses)may install integration (e.g., CRM integration from the integrator user)to be used on the multi-service business platform 510. Afterintegration, the yoga studio users may be able to take advantage of thecustom objects (e.g., custom definitions of the custom objects) createdby the integrator user such as the “yoga class” custom object, the “yogainstructor” custom object, and the “yoga student” custom object. Theyoga studio users may also have access to the services 530 of themulti-service business platform 510 such as reporting 534 (e.g., userreports), workflow automation 532 (e.g., user workflows), etc. that maybe used with these custom objects. It may be as if each yoga studio usermay rely on the integration from the integrator user such that theintegration may be packaged with the custom objects and definitions forusers of the multi-service business platform 510.

Referring now to example implementations of FIG. 46, there is shown aportion of the multi-service business platform 510 with specificemphasis on details of the customization system 520 and the storagesystem 550 used to create custom objects. In some examples, thecustomization system 520 may be a development tool such as a “genericdata representation” system. In examples, the multi-service businessplatform 510, as described in the disclosure, may be a collection ofprocesses that work over or on top of the customization system 520(e.g., specifically APIs of the customization system 520). This may meanthat a custom object created in and/or by the customization system 520(e.g., including properties related to the custom object) may beimmediately used by the services 530 and/or systems 502-508, 1600, 520,522-528, 562, 566 of the multi-service business platform 510 to executevarious tasks.

In example embodiments, as shown, the customization system 520 may useapplication programming interfaces (APIs) 610 as a computing interfaceto communicate and interact with users via the user devices 570 and/orintegrator users via integrator devices 576. The customization systemmay include and use an object schema service 620 for providing a dataapplication programming interface (API) such as an object definition APIfor receiving custom object information from the user devices 570 and/orintegrator devices 576. The object definition API may be a CRMdefinition API, an object schema API, CustomObject data API, or a newschema API (e.g., user may create new schema API which may be defined asa form when filling out this API). The object definition API may be usedfor communicating the custom object information with the customizationsystem 520 in creating custom objects. These data APIs (e.g., objectdefinition APIs and/or APIs 610) may be “generic data representation”APIs that may be used by users (e.g., via user devices 570), integratorusers (via integrator devices 576), and/or developer engineers (viamulti-service business platform 510) to express a data model that mayexist within the multi-service business platform 510 (e.g., framework).

The customization system 520 may include other services, components,and/or modules that may be used in the process of creating customobjects. For example, the customization system 520 may receive a userrequest for a custom object creation including custom object information(e.g., custom object name, an object type, at least one property of thecustom object, and an association of the custom object with anotherobject) from a user device 570 via the APIs 610. For example, thecustomization system 520 may include a form filling service 622 forreceiving the custom object information for the custom object. Forexample, the form filling service 622 may provide a form (e.g., via aGUI) that may include prompts (e.g., spaces in a form) for the user tosubmit or input custom object information that may include a name (e.g.,fill out name), a label, and basic information such as properties (e.g.,description information about properties which may be similar to corevalue or core structure of metadata for the custom object beingdefined). Development documents may be used, or the user may use theirown client for the form. In summation, the user may use the APIs 610, acustom object may be created, and then the user may login to themulti-service business platform 510 to monitor how custom objects may beintegrated with the rest of the multi-service business platform 510.

The customization system 520 may include and may execute a businesslogic/sensible default service 624 (e.g., may use business logic and/orsensible defaults) to interpret custom object information in order toconvert the custom object information into custom object metadata. Thecustomization system 520 may include and use a relational databasemanagement service 628 (e.g., structured query language database servicesuch as open source MySQL™ database service) to insert and store thecustom object metadata into a relational-type database (e.g., relationaldatabase management system). The customization system 520 may convertthe custom object metadata into language-independent data creating acustom object. The custom object may be sent in language-independentdata form to the user device 570 and/or services of the multi-servicebusiness platform 510, for use with marketing processes, salesprocesses, and/or customer service processes. For example, each customobject may be viewed by the user as a record on the user device 570 fromthe multi-service business platform 510. The customization system 520may also include a common data format conversion service 626 that mayassist with synchronization and integration of the custom object withinthe multi-service business platform 510 (e.g., integration of the customobject with the services 530 of the platform 510).

The customization system 520 may also communicate and direct changes todata on the storage system 550 when creating custom objects.Specifically, the multi-tenant data stores 552 of the storage system 550may include definitions, properties, values, instances, and associationsfor all objects (e.g., including custom objects and core objects). Thesemulti-tenant data stores 552 may be changed by the customization system520 when creating custom objects. The storage system 550 may includeknowledge graph(s) 556 such as an instance knowledge graph 640. Theknowledge graph(s) 556 may also include, at least implicitly, anontology 630. The ontology 630 may include the custom object with othercustom objects 632 and/or core objects 634 (e.g., contact objects,company objects, deal objects, and/or ticket objects) along with one ormore associations 636 (e.g., as added or selected associations 636 bythe user) between the objects. Similarly, the instance knowledge graph640 may include an instance of the custom object with other customobject instances 642 and/or core object instances 644 along with one ormore association instances 646 between the object instances based onmonitoring of activities of actual entities corresponding to theseobjects. Instances of objects (e.g., instances of custom objects 642and/or instances of core objects 644) may be referred to as records.

The multi-tenant data stores 552 (e.g., which may include one or moredatabases) may be updated when adding custom objects. As described inthe disclosure, the multi-tenant data stores 552 of the storage system550 may include definitions, properties, values, instances, andassociations. In some examples, the multi-tenant data stores 552 mayinclude a set of data stores that collectively support custom objectsand that may be updated by users of the multi-tenant data stores 552.For example, one data store may be a definitions data store that may bea system of records for storing objects and respective objectdefinitions (e.g., list of core objects and custom objects). Thisdefinitions data store may be a definition of what objects (e.g., customobjects and/or core objects) exist. This definitions data store mayinclude a list of objects, e.g., contacts, companies, deals, tickets,and custom objects (e.g., line items, products, etc.). This list ofobjects (e.g., custom objects) may also include and relate to anyintegrations that the user may have installed that define custom objectsand any other custom objects that the user may find in their data (e.g.,list of the tabs in a spreadsheet for user). Another data store may be aproperties data store that may be a system of records for storingproperties of custom objects such as tracking properties or attributesof custom objects as well as properties of core objects. Another datastore may be a values data store that may be a system of records fortracking values of properties. The larger multi-tenant data stores 552may not discriminate based upon a user ID or a custom object itself. Insome examples, each data store may include one or more databases.

In example embodiments, for the definitions data store, the system ofrecord for what custom object types exists may be a “used car”. Theproperties data store may include properties or attributes that mayinclude color, make, model, year, etc. for the used car custom object.The values data store may refer to the user, particular car, object type(e.g., which may be a car), related ID, property (e.g., car is red),etc. that may be laid out in such a way that the user may be able todynamically create, edit, and remove values data of custom objects.Also, the user may be able to dynamically create, edit, and removeobject properties and the user may dynamically create, edit, and removeproperties (e.g., property values) of custom objects. This may provideflexibility immediately in terms of the user creating, editing, and/orremoving custom objects, definitions of custom objects, and/orproperties of custom objects.

In some example embodiments, the definitions and properties data of themulti-tenant data stores 552 may be located in a relational-typedatabase such as relational database management system (e.g., structuredquery language database such as open source MySQL™ database) such thatmost of the data may be stored using a JavaScript™ Object Notation(JSON) (e.g., web-based tool JSON blob) to assist in creating, editing,viewing, formatting, and sharing JSON. The various metadata may bestored as columns for efficient indexing and queries. JSON may be usedas data format such that JSON may be an open standard file format anddata interchange format that may use text to store and transmit dataobjects. Other data formats may be used to accomplish the same orsimilar functionality described in the disclosure. In some examples, thevalues data store may be run by a non-structured query language (SQL)(NoSQL) or non-relational key value database which may be a similardatabase to Google™ Bigtable™ database.

The multi-tenant data stores 552 may include database storing metadataabout object types, e.g., once metadata may be established and/orinstances of custom objects may be created. Another set of APIs may beused for processing instance requests relating to specific instances ofcustom object. Importing may occur over a representational statetransfer (REST) endpoint (e.g., REST API) over Internet as described inmore detail below in the disclosure. Data may be written into a database(e.g., vastly horizontally distributed database) such that straightbytes may be written into a distributed file system. In some examples,the bytes may be interpreted using metadata in the relational database(e.g., MySQL™ systems). The multi-service business platform 510 mayconvert the interpreted data to a JSON representation of data (e.g.,human readable or machine readable data) to be sent to a user device(e.g., user device(s) 570) or may be available on the platform 510 via auser interface of the user device. The horizontally distributed databasemay be used primarily as a system of record for storing object values aswell as association values. In some examples, the relational database(e.g., mySQL™) may be used for storing property definitions, objectdefinitions, and association definitions. In another example, thehorizontally distributed database (e.g., may also be referred to asobject instance databases) may include object property values andassociation instances. The relational databases (e.g., mySQL™ and/orother metadata databases) may include object types, propertydefinitions, and association definitions. The above-described examplesof storage for multi-tenant data stores 552 may be some examples of howdata may be stored such that other similar and/or different examples ofdata storage may be utilized while maintaining core functionality of themulti-service business platform 510 and without departing from scope ofthis disclosure.

In some examples, the multi-service business platform 510 may includesecurity functionality, for example, to avoid exposing entirety ofmulti-tenant data stores 552 (e.g., platform's object type definitiondata) to users. Further, in some examples, there may be assumptionsabout what users may want to do and these assumptions may be internaldetails. For example, administrators of the multi-service businessplatform 510 may not want a certain object type exposed to the APIs(e.g., search APIs). In another example, as described in the disclosure,business logic/sensible default service 624 such as sensible defaultsmay be used by the multi-service business platform 510 in accepting anew custom object (e.g., new custom object type definition) and whencreating new associations.

The multi-service business platform may use a process toconfigure/update data stores (in some examples updating one or moredatabases in the data stores) based on custom objects. For example,users may use APIs (e.g., the APIs 610) that may includerepresentational state transfer (REST) APIs that may be exposed via anetwork (e.g., network 560 such as the Internet). These APIs (e.g., RESTAPIs) may be used by users (e.g., via the Internet) to specify differentoperations that may be invoked to establish data needed that may definea new custom object type and/or may define instances of that new customobject type. The REST APIs may include data APIs (e.g., objectdefinition APIs described in the disclosure) that may be used to receivecustom object information from user devices 570 and/or integratordevices 576. This process may utilize a wrapper interface such as theobject schema service 620 as described in the disclosure. The user mayprovide information using the object schema service 602 that may includea name of a custom object, properties of a custom object, andassociations of the provided custom object type with other custom objecttypes and/or core object types. Users may submit this information via aweb request to the APIs. The customization system 520 may execute thebusiness logic/sensible default service 624 (e.g., may use condensedbusiness logic and/or sensible defaults) to interpret the informationand insert necessary data in a relational database management system(e.g., set of mySQL™ tables). These mySQL™ tables may be a type ofdatabase where metadata may be stored about object types (specificallytypes of custom objects). Once the metadata may be established, theusers may create instances of the custom objects.

In an example where a user affiliated with a drone selling/rentalbusiness creates a drone custom object, the user may want to or preferto import data relating to several drone products and/or instances ofdrone products (e.g., information related to millions of drones owned bythe business and/or instances of activities related to the drones) intothe multi-service business platform 510 with different drone IDs andlinks to different deals that the drones may have been sold or rentedunder. When this import may be executed, a set of APIs may process theseinstance requests. For importing several drones (e.g., drone informationand/or activities related to drone products), the user may invokeoperations over REST APIs (e.g., endpoint over the Internet). Themulti-service business platform 510 may take information received andmay start writing data into another style of database which may be thevastly horizontally distributed database. The multi-service businessplatform 510 may be used to add on more virtual machines and continue tostore all user data without impacting performance of the overallmulti-service business platform 510. This data may be written asstraight bytes into what may be essentially a distributed file system.Then, the multi-service business platform 510 may interpret the bytesaccurately by using the metadata that may be available in mySQL™ systems(e.g., mySQL™ tables). When the user may want to fetch this data, themulti-service business platform 510 may read all the bytes from thedistributed database system. The multi-service business platform 510 mayinterpret what it means to use the data from the mySQL™ systems. Then,the multi-service business platform 510 may convert this information ordata into a human readable or a machine readable JSON representation ofthe data and may send it back to users. Alternatively, the JSONrepresentation may be available through the existing user interface ofthe multi-service business platform 510.

In examples, the multi-service business platform 510 may provide amechanism (e.g., a GUI) for a user to login to the multi-servicebusiness platform 510 to start using the created custom objects with theservices 530 (e.g., framework features such as workflows, reporting).The multi-service business platform 510 may direct the usage of theintegrated custom objects with various functionality. Simply, bycreating the custom objects, the user may immediately be able to utilizeall the functionality of the multi-service business platform 510 withthe created custom objects. For example, the user may use services suchas workflow automation 532 (e.g., workflows tool) and the user may seethe option to include and/or use the created custom objects withworkflows. The multi-service business platform 510 may direct the customobjects to be used with the services 530 providing all the automation ofservices described in the disclosure (e.g., automatically capable ofusing services with custom objects created). The custom objects may beaccount specific such that custom objects may only be used and viewedunder one or more user accounts and/or one or more company accounts(e.g., custom object created by owner user of business may only beviewed and used with services by the same owner user). In some examples,the multi-service business platform 510 may be an external/visibleentity into which users log in. In other examples, the multi-servicebusiness platform 510 may serve as a backbone of higher-levelfunctionality that may be exposed throughout an application userinterface (UI) and external APIs of the multi-service business platform510. For example, as described in the disclosure, a manifestation ofthis automation integration functionality of the multi-service businessplatform 510 may be with services 530 (e.g., workflow automation 532 orworkflows feature). As described in the disclosure, the multi-servicebusiness platform 510 may use the synchronization system 504 forproviding custom object synchronization between the customization system520 and the services 530 of the multi-service business platform 510.

In example embodiments, the multi-service business platform 510 mayinclude the customization system 520 for providing a framework forcustomized programming. The multi-service business platform 510 may beconfigured in various ways with the customization system 520 to allowfor users to be able to program custom objects. In example embodiments,the customization system 520 may be a tool whereby a user, an internaldeveloper or team of internal developers, and/or a third-partyintegrator may define code that may run inside the customization system520 of the multi-service business platform 510. An added benefit ofinternal developer teams being able to define new custom object typesmay be the improved speed from development to shipping of thesecustomized objects to users. For example, previously with core objects,release of these objects to users on the multi-service business platform510 may take several months. Using this new process for creating customobjects on the multi-service business platform 510, the custom objectsand related services (e.g., features) may be released to users muchsooner and faster such that a user may define a new custom object inminutes and may make use of the custom object immediately. Themulti-service business platform 510 may also provide for the executionand/or use of the custom objects that may be programmed with theservices 530 and/or other systems of the multi-service business platform510. For example, custom objects may be defined and the multi-servicebusiness platform 510 may be the execution engine that makes use of thecustom objects.

The multi-service business platform 510 with the customization system520 together may form the multi-tenant distributed system (e.g.,multi-tenant data stores 552 of the multi-service business platform 510)as described in the disclosure. In some examples, the multi-tenantdistributed system and/or multi-tenant data stores as described in thedisclosure may be configured generally such that all users' data mayreside within a single system. For example, rather than provisioningdedicated systems for each user, the multi-service business platform 510may be architected to allow for all customer data to co-exist within thesame single system. However, the data may be segregated such that themulti-service business platform 510 may prevent mixing of the data(e.g., data from one user is never exposed to another user despitehaving their data stored in the same system). For example, one datastore of the multi-tenant data stores 552 may include all core objects(e.g., CRM objects) and custom objects that may be defined by users,integrator users, and the developers of the multi-service businessplatform 510. For example, a core object (e.g., contact object), a firstcustom object (e.g., drone custom object), and a second custom object(e.g., yoga class object) may all coexist within the same multi-servicebusiness platform 510 or system. The multi-service business platform 510may use the services 530 to perform actions and operations on thedefined custom objects (e.g., defining workflows, reporting with respectto custom objects, etc.) from the multi-tenant system. In some examples,data of custom objects and instances of custom objects (e.g., dronecustom object data and/or instance data of the drone custom object) maybe proprietary data even within the multi-tenant data stores 552. Thisproprietary data within the multi-tenant data stores 552 may besegmented and separated such that the services 530 (and systems of themulti-service business platform 510) may be executed on top of thecustom objects and/or instances of objects without any need for theseservices 530 and systems of the multi-service business platform 510 toaccess the proprietary data. For example, when values data of the valuesdata store (and possibly other data of the multi-tenant data stores 552)may be populated from a user and knowledge graphs 556 may be created forthe individual users based on this populated data, the services 530 andsystems of the multi-service business platform 510 may then operate onthe custom objects and instantiations of the custom objects.

In example embodiments, custom objects may be generated to be used inconnections with the customer relationship management (CRM) system 502and the content management system (CMS) 508 that may be based on customobject definitions provided by users. In some examples, as shown in FIG.45, the multi-service business platform 510 may provide for customobjects to be linked/connected to and/or used with the CRM system 502 interms of associations with core objects (e.g., contact objects, companyobjects, deal objects, and ticket objects) and/or other custom objects.The multi-service business platform 510 may also provide for arelationship between custom objects and the content management system(CMS) 508. Custom objects may be shared between the CRM system 502 andthe CMS 508. For example, the CMS 508 may have a database that users mayuse to define data models to drive pages and content in the CMS 508.Since the building of APIs and systems may be needed for custom objects,the CMS 508 may also migrate its database objects into the customizationsystem 520, storage system 550, and/or other systems of themulti-service business platform 510. Also, when building pages in theCMS 508, users may leverage various tags that pull in data from otherparts of the multi-service business platform 510 when a page may berendered. For example, one such tag may be “crm_object” which may pullin the specified object into the CMS page when it may be rendered. Forexample, a user that has a “rental property” custom object may use theCMS 508 to define a page that may have a list of all “rental properties”that may be available and ready to rent. The user may then definesubpages for when a customer clicks on a specific rental property. Thecontent on the defined subpages may be populated from information storedon those custom objects. Thus, in example embodiments, user definedcustom objects may be trackable throughout a user account lifecyclebeginning in the CMS 508, through the CRM system 502, and potentiallythrough the multi-client service system 1600. In this way, users may beable to obtain insights from their data that may not have beenpreviously available to them.

In example embodiments, the multi-service business platform 510 may usea common format for integrating custom objects with the multi-servicebusiness platform 510. The common format may be embedded in a core ofdata processing systems. Various applications may be updatedautomatically, e.g., CRM applications and/or reporting applications maybe updated automatically by syncing into third party services 574 (e.g.,third party applications). The synchronization system 504 of themulti-service business platform 510 may be used to synchronize customobjects between third party services 574 and the multi-service businessplatform 510. Custom objects may be configured to synchronize withexternal objects that exist externally from the multi-service businessplatform 510 (e.g., external to the CRM system 502/CMS 508). Thesynchronization system 504 of the multi-service business platform 510may be used to sync arbitrary custom objects outside the multi-servicebusiness platform 510 to objects inside the platform 510, which mayfacilitate creation of custom objects and workflows (e.g., usingworkflow automation 532).

In example embodiments, the customization system 520 may providemechanisms (e.g., GUIs) and processes for creating associations for thecustom objects. For example, the customization system 520 may allow forthe creation of an association definition entry (e.g., the relationshipof identification (ID) representing one object type to an IDrepresenting another object type) in a relational database managementsystem (e.g., mySQL™ tables). The association definition entry may havean ID used to associate instances of two object types with one another.This process may use similar techniques used with graph databaseprocesses (e.g., graph database management system processes such asNeo4j processes). Different name associations may be between differentobject types as well as between same object types.

For example, creating an association may first require a definition of avalid association which may also require a unique ID representing oneobject type and a unique ID representing another object type that may bethe object types associated by this association. When users request thattwo object types be associated (e.g., where one object may be a customobject), then the customization system 520 of the multi-service businessplatform 510 may create an association definition entry in a relationaldatabase management system (e.g., mySQL™) that may link the customobject type with either another custom object type or a core object asrequested. Once the association definition may be created, theassociation definition may be given an association type ID. Theassociation type ID may be used by users to associate specific instancesof two object types with one another. For example, associating twocustom objects (e.g., associating two custom object instances may be tworows in a table) may start with a request to associate through anassociations API. The customization system 520 of the multi-servicebusiness platform 510 may then write a row into the vastly horizontallydistributed database (e.g., may also be referred to as an associationsdatabase) which may include a “fat row” format (e.g., may have thesource object ID as the key and every linked object ID of the sameobject type belonging to an association type which may extend out in awide row from that object type). This implementation, for example, maybe similar to high end sophisticated graph databases such as a graphdatabase management (e.g., Neo4j) that may use a similar strategy thatmay be a common proprietary open source graph database.

In some example embodiments, a qualifier may be added to an associationtype that may be a name of the association. The multi-service businessplatform 510 may have directed named associations and may expandmetadata to more sophisticated metadata based on types of associationsdefined. In examples, company conduct associations may be used such thatthere may be different types of the associations (e.g., different namedassociations such that there may be different names of associationsbetween the same object types).

In example embodiments, each respective association may include aninverse or opposite association that may be created automatically inresponse to defining the respective association. For example, when auser may create an association type (e.g., sold a car between businessand customers), the multi-service business platform 510 mayautomatically create the inverse association type (e.g., “car was soldby”) and may give the inverse association the same name as theassociation. Even though an association may be created such that theuser may represent a sale of a car to a customer as the customer“purchased” the car (e.g., when defining the association), themulti-service business platform 510 may also automatically create theinverse association in the opposite direction (e.g., the car was“purchased by” the customer) which may be given the same name but adifferent association type ID. In summary, when an association may becreated for a relationship in one direction, the multi-service businessplatform 510 may always automatically create an association in the otherdirection such that the multi-service business platform 510 may supportboth representations for the association and inverse association whichrefer to same relationship between objects. For example, using the yogaclass example, two custom objects may include class and student. Anassociation between these custom objects may be the class having astudent that is Bob. An inverse association (e.g., opposite) of theassociation may be that student Bob may be an attendee or a member ofthe class (e.g., yoga class B). In summary, the inverse may mean that anassociation may be from the opposite view which may be from the view ofthe student or from the view of the class depending on the originalassociation that was created. In this way, the time to process somesearch results, listing results, and/or other relevant requests may bereduced via the inverse associations.

Referring now to example implementations of FIG. 47, there is shown anexample 700 of a custom object (e.g., first custom object 710A) andassociations 720A, 720B between the first custom object 710A and otherobjects (e.g., second custom object 710B, core object 730) according toexample embodiments of the disclosure. As shown, each custom object710A, 710B may include a primary key 712-1, 712-2 (e.g., directedassociations may be defined between pairs of object identifications(IDs) within a context of a portal and object type). The primary key712-1, 712-2 may be used to locate specific objects. In examples, theprimary key 712-1, 712-2 may include a combination of a portal ID, anobject type ID, and an object ID. These three unique identifiers may, incombination, uniquely allow for the ability to find objects. Each customobject 710A, 710B may also include a custom object name 714-1, 714-2, acustom object type 716-1, 716-2, and custom object properties 718-1,718-2. The customization system 520 may be used to create at least oneassociation (e.g., first association 720A and/or second association720B) for the first custom object 710A with another object 710B, 730based on the custom object information received (e.g., as received viathe form filling service 622). As shown in FIG. 47, in exampleembodiments, each association 720A, 720B may include an associationidentification (ID) 722-1, 722-2, an association type 724-1, 724-2, twoIDs involved in association (e.g., a ‘From’ object identification (ID)726A-1, 726A-2 and a ‘To’ object identification (ID) 726B-1, 726B-2),and a timestamp 728-1, 728-2 that may refer to when the association mayhave been created. In examples, the directionality of each association720A, 720B may be indicated by the ‘From’ object ID 726A-1, 726A-2 andthe ‘To’ object ID 726B-1, 726B-2. For example, where a directedassociation between object IDs may be defined, the association in anopposite direction (e.g., inverse association) may also be defined thatmay result in two associations (e.g., two association records) for pairsof associated objects per association type. In some examples, a user maydecide to define associations in terms of hierarchy by defining names ofassociations (e.g., user may name one association as “Parent” betweentwo objects and/or may name another association as “child” between thesame two objects but in the opposite direction) based on their businessmodel. Any further information from each association may be derived fromlooking up and/or searching for the IDs, the object tables, and/orviewing what property values may be associated with those IDs.

The primary key 712-1 of the first custom object 710A may be directed toeither the ‘From’ object ID 726A-1, 726A-2 or the ‘To’ object ID 726B-1,726B-2 based on a defined relationship between the custom object 710Aand another object (e.g., second custom object 710B or a core object730). In some examples, this defined relationship may be linked bothways such that two objects may be linked via a same association, e.g.,where the first custom object 710A may be the ‘From’ (e.g., directed to‘From’ object ID 726A-1 of the first association 720A) and a secondcustom object 720B may be the ‘To’ (e.g., direct to ‘To’ object ID726B-1 of the first association 720A) and vice versa where the secondcustom object 710B may be the ‘From’ and the first custom object 710Amay be the ‘To’ for the same association but from a differentperspective. These inverse associations may be automatically createdwithin each association (e.g., same association but may have differentIDs distinguishing between association and inverse association) wherethe inverse association may be referring to the same association butfrom an inverse perspective of the other object.

For example, where the first custom object 710A may be a customer andthe second custom object 710B may be a “yoga class” and the firstassociation 720A may be “class attendance”, the same association may bedescribed as “customer” (‘From’) attended “yoga class” (‘To’) or “yogaclass” (‘From’) was attended by “customer” (‘To’). In another example,where the first custom object 710A may be a “salesperson” and the secondcustom object 710B may be a “vehicle” and the association may be “sold”,the same association may be described as “salesperson” (‘From’) sold(association) “vehicle” (‘To’) or “vehicle” (‘From’) was sold by(inverse association) “salesperson” (‘To’). In another example, asshown, the first custom object 710A may relate to the core object 730via a second association 720B. Similar to custom objects, the coreobject 730 may also include a name, a type, and properties but forpurposes of showing relationships with custom objects, only a coreobject primary key 732 is shown in the core object 730. The core objectprimary key 732 may be similar to the primary keys 712-1, 712-2. Usingthe previous example, the first custom object 710A may be the“salesperson” and the core object 730 may be a company object (e.g.,having an object name, company object type, and company objectproperties) that may be related by second association 720B. In thisexample, where the first custom object 710A may be a “salesperson” andthe core object may be a “company” and the second association 720B maybe “employed by”, the same association 720B may be described as“salesperson” (‘From’) employed by (association) “company” (‘To’) or“company” (‘From’) employs (inverse association) “salesperson” (‘To’).For the example of the vehicle and the salesperson, in some examples,absent an inverse association, a request to view who may have sold aparticular vehicle may require processing each instance of thesalesperson custom object before identifying which salesperson may havesold the particular vehicle. Conversely, with the inverse association,the same request may be processed by fetching the instances of theparticular vehicle (e.g., particular vehicle custom object) andidentifying the salesperson instances (e.g., instances of salespersoncustom objects) via the inverse association (“sold by”) between thevehicle record and the salesperson record (e.g., between instances ofthe particular vehicle custom objects and all instances of salespersoncustom objects based on “sold by” inverse association).

In example embodiments, associations such as association instances mayinclude association ID labels 722-1, 722-2 that may define relationshipsbut may be dynamic. For example, where a student may become a graduateor an alumnus such that the relationship with a given school may evolvefrom student to alumni. The association ID label 722-1, 722-2 may existon the details between the two objects but not necessarily on eitherspecific object.

In creating custom objects, the customization system 520 of themulti-service business platform 510 may include safeguards. For example,one safeguard may be a guided service that may assist users in creatingquality object types in the schema service. In some examples, part ofthe guided service may include the customization system 520 providingrequirements for users creating custom objects (e.g., users may berequired to define objects). Also, part of the guided service may usethe customization system 520 and the multi-service business platform 510to provide the ability to automatically introduce some relationships(e.g., associations) to core object types. In some examples, there maybe a limited number of association types, number of distinct objecttypes, number of specific instances per given object type, etc. that maybe provided in prompts to users providing various advantages. Forexample, the multi-service business platform 510 may limit the number ofassociation types that may be created to prevent an overload of theassociation functionality of the customization system 520 of themulti-service business platform 510. In another example, themulti-service business platform 510 may limit the number of distinctobject types that may be created to avoid accidentally confusing objecttypes with object instances. In another example, the system may limitthe number of specific instances of a given type that may be created toavoid spamming with data through an import process. Other requirementsmay include the multi-service business platform 510 requiring that usersmay define a primary display label for objects so that the objects maybe represented in a UI.

As described herein, the multi-service business platform 510 may be usedfor a business that markets towards customers interested in dronerenting (e.g., renting a fleet of drones). The drone business mayconsider important information to track such as who may be rentingdrones and point of time of renting. A user from this drone business mayuse the customization system 520 of the multi-service business platform510 to create a “drone” custom object that may be associated with coreobjects (e.g., deal objects and company objects) based on customersrenting drones. After creating “drone” custom objects, the user may usethe customization system 520 (e.g., import service) to import drone datahaving different drone IDs and links to different deals (e.g., via theAPIs 610 of the customization system 520).

For example, a user may use the multi-service business platform 510 totrack drones and particularly determine who may rent drones and at whatpoint in time. Accordingly, the user may create a drone custom objectthat may be linked with systems and services of the multi-servicebusiness platform 510 (e.g., particularly the CRM system 502) as to whatdeal objects the drone custom object may be associated with, whatcustomers may be renting the drones, etc. The services 530 (e.g.,reporting 534 such as standard reporting and workflow automation 532)may leverage data that the drone user defined. The drone user may usethe customization system 520 (e.g., generic data representation system)to define whatever data the user may want and relationships between thedata.

Then, code or automation may be run against the user's data (e.g.,drone-related data from a user's business) in a multi-tenant distributedsystem (e.g., multi-tenant data stores 552). Using the multi-tenant datastores 552 may mean that there may be some separation of user drone datafrom the rest of the data in the multi-tenant data stores 552 of themulti-service business platform 510 such that the multi-service businessplatform 510 may not know that the user that relates to any particulardata set thereby providing privacy between data of users and useraccounts. Also, the multi-service business platform 510 may not be awareof what object type may be used by accounts to uphold the privacy ofusers. However, the user may still use the multi-service businessplatform 510 to perform actions and operations on the drone customobjects and data as defined by the users that may be exclusivelyaccessed by the drone user accounts (e.g., from drone renting businessor client).

In another example, a business may be an auto dealership. The autodealership may wish to represent particularly important objects on themulti-service business platform 510, e.g., vehicles, salespeople, partssuppliers, other suitable elements that may be represented in datastores(e.g., databases of datastores), and the like. In this example, a userof the auto dealership may run their business using a spreadsheet (e.g.,Microsoft Excel™ spreadsheet) for recording information about the autodealership business. Tabs of each spreadsheet may refer to inventory(e.g., new inventory and/or used inventory), salespeople, and customers.The user may create custom objects corresponding to these tabs. Forexample, the user may create custom objects that may include asalesperson custom object, an inventory (e.g., vehicle) custom object,and a customer custom object using the customization system 520. Eachtab may refer to a different custom object or custom object definitionthat may be created. These custom objects may include properties basedon the tabs. For example, each custom object (e.g., custom objectdefinition) may include a collection of properties as described in moredetail in the disclosure below as property instances for custom objectinstances. The user may also create possible associations between thesecustom objects and other objects (e.g., core objects and/or other customobjects) using the customization system 520. These custom objects (e.g.,custom objects 632) and associations 636 (e.g., association instances)may be stored in the ontology 630 of the knowledge graph(s) 556. Ingeneral, all this data may be stored in the spreadsheet such that everytab may be a different custom object (e.g., different objectdefinition). Each row of the spreadsheet may be a different objectinstance (e.g., different custom object instance).

Referring now to FIG. 48, there is shown a visual representation of aportion of an example instance knowledge graph 800 according to exampleembodiments. In this example, the instance knowledge graph may relate toinstances of the custom objects (e.g., from rows of a spreadsheet) thatmay be based on the created custom objects (e.g., from the tabs of aspreadsheet) for the auto dealership business. The custom objectinstances may include a salesperson custom object instance (Bob) 806A,another salesperson custom object instance 806B (Alice), a customercustom object instance 802 (John), and an inventory custom objectinstance 804 (e.g., vehicle custom object instance such as “ToyotaCamry”). These custom object instances may be based on the followingcustom objects (e.g., custom objects 632 of the ontology 630):salesperson custom object, customer custom object, and vehicle customobject. Corresponding defined properties are shown with each customobject instance as well as possible relationships (e.g., associations)between the custom object instances. For example, as properties may bedefined when creating custom objects, the salesperson custom objectinstance 806A (Bob) may include salesperson properties 810A (e.g., aname such as “Bob”, address, email, phone number, employee ID, datehired, title, commission, and one or more goals such as per year, perquarter, per month) for a particular salesperson. The other salespersoncustom object instance 806B (Alice) may include similar salespersonproperties 810B to the salesperson properties 810A of the salespersoncustom object instance 806A (Bob). The inventory custom object instance804 (Toyota Camry) may include inventory properties (e.g., specificallyvehicle properties 812) as defined when creating the vehicle customobjects. The vehicle properties 812 (e.g., from car inventory tab ofspreadsheet) may include a vehicle identification number (VIN), car makesuch as Toyota, model such as Camry, year, color, mileage, condition,sunroof (T/F), and alarm (T/F). The customer custom object instance 802(John) may include customer properties 814 as defined when creating thecustomer custom objects. The customer properties 814 may include namesuch as John, address, email, phone number, budget, purchase date, andpurchase (T/F). In examples, some of the properties of the customobjects may be added as being set for the custom objects. Properties maybe created for each custom object and may be set on an instance. Otherproperties (e.g., T/F properties) may be added as being flexible oroptional depending on instance such that these properties may also beset on an instance such as alarm (T/F) which may refer to whethervehicle “has alarm system” property for inventory custom object but notknown until instance occurs. The alarm (T/F) (e.g., “has alarm system”)may be true for some cars, false for other cars, and even unknown forsome cars based on the vehicle custom object instance 804. Accordingly,this type of flexible or optional property information may be left empty(e.g., similar to leaving a cell empty in spreadsheet) such that thisproperty information may be filled in as instances occur. As activitiesoccur relating to any one of these custom objects (e.g., custom objects632) and associations 636 (e.g., association instances) of the ontology(e.g., the ontology 630), the instance knowledge graph (instanceknowledge graph 640) may be generated creating instances of these customobjects (e.g., custom object instances 642) along with associationinstances (association instances 646) directly corresponding to theactivities that occurred (e.g., a Toyota Camry vehicle was sold bysalesperson Bob to customer Steven). In this example, rows in thespreadsheet may refer to instances of the custom objects.

In an example, as shown in FIG. 48, there are several associationinstances 820-828 between the different custom object instances that maybe based on the possible associations defined in the ontology (e.g.,associations 636 of the ontology 630). These association instances820-828 may be added to the instance knowledge graph 640 as activitiesoccur relating to any one of the associations 636 between custom objects632 of the ontology 630. For example, an association instance betweenthe salesperson custom object instance 806A (Bob) and anothersalesperson custom object instance 806B (Alice) may be “reports to”association instance 828 (or, for example, “is supervised by”association instance as described in the disclosure) such that the othersalesperson custom object instance 806B (Alice) relates to thesalesperson custom object instance 806A (Bob) as a manager. As describedin the disclosure, there may be an inverse association (e.g., inverseassociation instance) created automatically for every association (e.g.,association instance). The association and inverse association may betraced bidirectionally. The inverse association for “reports to”association instance 828 may be “reported to by” association instance828′ (or, for example, “supervises” association instance as described inthe disclosure) such that the other salesperson custom object instance806B (Alice) “reported to by” 828′ the salesperson custom objectinstance 806A (Bob). The salesperson custom object instance 806A (Bob)may relate to the inventory (e.g., vehicle) custom object instance 804(Toyota Camry) by a “sold” association instance 820 such that thesalesperson custom object instance 806A (Bob) “sold” 820 the vehiclecustom object instance 804 (Toyota Camry). The inverse association for“sold” 820 association instance may be “sold by” association instance820′ such that the vehicle custom object instance 804 (Toyota Camry) maybe “sold by” 820′ the salesperson custom object instance 806A (Bob). Thesalesperson custom object instance 806A (Bob) may relate to the customercustom object instance 802 (Steven) by a “sold to” association instance822 such that the salesperson custom object instance 806A (Bob) “soldto” 822 the customer custom object instance 802 (Steven). The inverseassociation for “sold to” association instance 822 may be “sold to by”association instance 822′ such that the customer custom object instance802 (Steven) may be “sold to by” 822′ the salesperson custom objectinstance 806A (Bob). The customer custom object instance 802 (Steven)may relate to the inventory (e.g., vehicle) custom object instance 804(Toyota Camry) by a “purchased” association instance 826 such that thecustomer custom object instance 802 (Steven) “purchased” 826 the vehiclecustom object instance 804 (Toyota Camry). The inverse association for“purchased” association instance 826 may be “purchased by” associationinstance 826′ such that the vehicle custom object instance 804 (ToyotaCamry) may be “purchased by” 826′ the customer custom object instance802 (Steven). The customer custom object instance 802 (Steven) may alsorelate to the vehicle custom object instance 804 (Toyota Camry) by a“test drove” association instance 824 such that the customer customobject instance 802 (Steven) “test drove” 824 the vehicle custom objectinstance 804 (Toyota Camry). The inverse association for “test drove”association instance 824 may be “test drove by” association instance824′ such that the vehicle custom object instance 804 (Toyota Camry) maybe “test drove by” 824′ the customer custom object instance 802(Steven). In an example, the customer (e.g., referring to customercustom object instance 802 (Steven)) may decide to trade-in or selltheir purchased vehicle (e.g., referring to the same vehicle customobject instance 804 (Toyota Camry)) back to the same salesperson (e.g.,referring to the salesperson custom object instance 806A (Bob)) suchthat new association instances may be added automatically with respectto and between these different custom objects.

In some examples, advanced reporting, as described in the disclosure,may be used with the auto dealership. For example, a user may want toknow a home and zip code of the customers who are buying the most carsfrom the salesperson (Bob). The user may select all the associated salesfor the salesperson (Bob). For those sales, the user may then select theassociated customers and for those selected customers, the user mayaccess or obtain their zip codes. The advanced reporting service mayaggregate by zip code and count the number of instances of zip code.This may involve a standard style SQL query but may be advanced in termsof the query or by tooling which may be used in building these reportsby advanced reporting.

FIGS. 49A-49G show example screenshots of user interfaces (UIs) relatingto processes of creating custom objects and processes of using customobjects on the multi-service business platform 510. These figures arescreenshots of example graphical user interfaces (GUIs) allowing a userto create custom objects and then use the custom objects with servicesof the multi-service business platform 510 according to one or moreexample embodiments of the disclosure.

For example, FIG. 49A shows a screenshot of graphical user interface(GUI) 1100 for creating custom objects (e.g., creating custom objectdefinitions including creation of properties of the custom objects). Inexample embodiments, other GUIs may be used such as an object definitionGUI that may be presented to a user where the user may define schemas oftheir custom objects. In defining schemas of a custom object, the usermay provide an object name (e.g., may describe type of object) andproperties of the custom object. In this example, the subscriptions mayrefer to a type of custom objects such that subscription custom objectsmay be created in the GUI 1100 from directing APIs. The GUI 1100 andother examples of GUIs may show an ability to create custom objects andassociations (e.g., creating association definitions) that may behandled via external APIs as described in the disclosure. For example,the form filling service 622 may be used with these APIs with respect toGUI 1100. FIG. 49B shows a screenshot of GUI 1200 for listing customobjects (e.g., shown as subscription custom objects) that were created.As shown in FIG. 49B, in some examples, the user may view the customobjects along with core objects in a grid view. In this example, theuser may select links associated with objects such as custom objects toview their records. This may be expanded across and throughout themulti-service business platform 510 which may be used by users for theirbusinesses.

In examples, some of screenshots show use of the custom objects withvarious services (e.g., the services 530). For example, thesescreenshots may be GUIs involving use of custom objects with services(e.g., using workflows and reporting). These example GUIs may be showinginstance-level usage throughout a user interface (UI). For example, FIG.49C shows a screenshot of GUI 1300 for listing custom objects withfiltering capability services (e.g., search/filter capabilities). Inthis example, properties of custom objects (e.g., properties ofsubscription custom objects) may be searched using filtering capabilityservices. In other example embodiments, FIG. 49D shows a screenshot ofGUI 1400 for custom object workflows that may relate to assigning aproper service package to a subscription. In this example, actions maybe shown related to service creation that may involve custom objects.Another workflow example is in FIG. 49E showing a screenshot of GUI 1500for custom object workflows that may relate to sending an email to acustomer automatically if the custom may be starting their subscriptionsoon. In this example, actions may be shown related to a subscriptionstart reminder that may involve custom objects. In another example, FIG.49F shows a screenshot of GUI 1800 for reporting with custom objectsthat may relate to breaking down subscription custom object types.Another reporting example is in FIG. 49G showing a screenshot of GUI3000 for reporting with custom objects that may relate to breaking downsubscription terms by subscription owner. These reporting examples showoptions for users in configuring charts based on type of charts and/ordata that may be included in charts as relating to one or more customobjects.

In example embodiments, there are other custom object API examples suchas relating to customer relationship management (CRM) objects. Forexample, a CRM objects API (e.g., public API) may be able to representand organize data based on business requirements. Specifically, the CRMobjects API may be created to define and manage custom objects. Usersand/or integrators may use the CRM objects API to define custom objects,properties, associations, and/or leverage the multi-service businessplatform 510 to increase business. Custom objects may be specific to aportal. The custom objects may exist with core objects (e.g., contacts,companies, deals, and/or tickets) in the multi-service business platform510. Custom objects and custom properties may be defined to organize andrepresent business data for a company or industry. Custom objects may belinked and/or associated to the core objects or other custom objects.

In example embodiments, a custom object may be defined by defining acustom object type and property definitions. This defining process mayalso include defining association definitions with core objects (e.g.,contact objects) and/or custom objects. By default, the property typeand field type may be a string and text, respectively (e.g., a propertymay exist under properties to be specified as various code terminology).As part of the schema, there may be association definitionsautomatically created between the custom object and email, meetingevents, notes, tasks, calls, and conversation sessions. Custom objectsmay be retrieved (e.g., retrieved as meta-type custom objects, fullyqualified named custom objects, and/or portal-specific custom objects).Related object schema may be modified. Once a custom object may bedefined, in some examples, the name and labels (singular and plural) maynot be changed. Properties of the custom object may be modified aftercreation. Custom objects may be associated with core objects (e.g.,contact, company, deal, or ticket objects) or other custom objects.Custom objects may be deleted after all object instances of a same orsimilar type are deleted (e.g., custom object type may be deleted afterall object instances of the same or similar type, associations, andcustom object properties may be deleted). In examples, custom objectsmay be associated with core objects or other custom objects.

In example embodiments, when creating or updating properties for customobjects, both type and field type values may be required. The “type”value may determine the type of the property (e.g., a string or anumber). The field type property may determine how the property mayappear in the multi-service business platform 510 or on a form (e.g., asa plain text field, a dropdown menu, or a date picker). There arevarious examples of how type and field type may be configured forproperties on new custom objects. Values for field type and compatiblefield type values may include enumeration (e.g., string representing aset of options), date (e.g., representing a specific day, month, andyear), date time (e.g., representing day, month, year, and time of day),string (e.g., plain text strings), and/or number (e.g., value containingnumeric digits such as one decimal). Other field type values may includeBoolean checkbox (e.g., input that may allow users to select either“Yes” or “No” as used in a form displaying a single checkbox), checkbox(e.g., a list of checkboxes that may allow a user to select multipleoptions from a set of options allowed for the property), date (e.g.,date value that may be displayed as a date picker), file (e.g., allowsfor file to be uploaded to a form such as stored and displayed as a URLlink to the file), number (e.g., string of numbers in decimal orscientific notation), radio (e.g., input that may allow users to selectone of a set of options allowed for the property which may be displayedas a set of radio buttons when used in a form), select (e.g., dropdowninput that may allow users to select one of a set of options allowed forthe property), text (e.g., plain text string that may be displayed as asingle line text input), and/or text area (e.g., plain text string thatmay be displayed as a multi-line text input).

In example embodiments, a custom object process may include creation ofa custom object schema (e.g., object type, properties, andassociations). The custom object schema may be fetched. A custom objectinstance may be created. An association may be created between thecustom object instance and an existing contact. A new associationdefinition may be created between the custom object and a ticket object.A new property definition may be created. The object schema may beupdated with the new property.

In example embodiments, the multi-service business platform 510 mayprovide marketing and sales functionality for communicating withcustomers, tracking interest, and/or offering possible deals based oninventory. For example, where the user is a car dealership, objectschema may be created to define and represent car inventory in themulti-service business platform 510. There may be attributes of the carthat may be stored. The car may be represented as having the followingproperties: condition (new or used): enumeration, Date received (at adealership): date, Year: number, Make: string, Model: string, VIN:string, Color: string, Mileage: number, Price: number, and/or Notes:string. To connect with a potential customer, a relationship betweencore contact objects and the custom car object may be defined. Bydefining an association between the contact (core object) and the car(custom object), the multi-service business platform 510 may be utilizedto communicate with potential buyers and track progress on a potentialdeal. Once a data model may be finalized, the object schema may becreated using the API. This may define the custom object and itsproperties as well as its association with other core objects (e.g.,contact objects). A property group relating to car information may becreated. Some object properties may be created when creating the schema.Additional properties may be added, and the object schema may be updatedat a later time.

The custom object process for creation of the custom object schema maybe applied to the car dealership example. For example, an object schemarelated to cars may be fetched. An object instance may be created whichmay allow for the use of the multi-service business platform 510 tocommunicate with potential customers, track potential interest, andoffer possible deals for them based on inventory (e.g., creating a newcustom car object instance and associating this instance with anexisting contact object instance). A new object identification (ID) maybe used for associations created such as the association between thecustom car object and an existing contact. Objects and properties may beretrieved as needed. An association may be created to an objectinstance. For example, with the new object ID and a target contact ID,the multi-service business platform 510 may be used to create anassociation between the new car instance and the contact. As describedin the disclosure, associations may be described in both directions orbidirectionally (e.g., between car and contact such that eachassociation may relate to the car's association or relationship to thecontact in one direction as well as the contact's association orrelation to the car in the other direction). There may be a newassociation definition. For example, the multi-service business platform510 may be used to track services performed on cars sold. Themulti-service business platform 510 may further use tickets to log anymaintenance performed. A new relationship between custom car objects andcore ticket objects may be created by creation of a new association.There may be a new property definition. For example, maintenancepackages may be offered to customers (e.g., oil change every 5k miles)which may be tracked by adding a new property. A new field may show upin a sidebar interface of the multi-service business platform 510 as asecondary property which may provide quick identification of a level ofservice when a car goes into a car shop.

As shown in FIGS. 49A-49G, in an example CRM, properties may be foundand may show up in several services. For example, properties may show upin reports, workflows, imports, profile page, etc. Specifically, theremay be a listing page GUI (e.g., the GUI 1200 of FIG. 49B) that may showa listing of all the object instances for a type. In this page, the usermay shift from one object type to other object types that may be definedin this portal. For example, there may be a subscriptions custom objectand services object. There may be several instances of services. If auser clicks into an individual profile for each service, the user mayview different fields. Each and every single one of these fields may bea property in the multi-tenant data store that may be related to theobject definition for the corresponding custom object. In anotherexample, if a user goes to settings and goes to properties, the user maygo into service properties and may create a new property for the servicecustom object (e.g., custom object definition). Then, when the user goesback to the services, the user may then be able to add the property as acolumn in this table, may drill in and add the property as an item thatthe user may want to view, and the user may start reading and writingdata from that property which may be from the CRM side. When the usergoes into automation and defined workflows, the user may request thatthey want a workflow from scratch, e.g., a service-based workflow. Forthe triggers and the actions on this service-based workflow, the usermay have access to all these properties that may have been previouslydefined. If the user went in and added a new property, the new propertymay show up in this list, and the user may trigger logic based on valuesof the “service” custom objects.

Additionally, in some examples, the user may filter on associated customobjects. For example, if a service instance may be associated with adeal. The user may filter on the associated deal information byleveraging associations with custom objects. If the associations are notdefined and in the knowledge graph, then the user may not leverage themin workflows. In summary, anytime users load a part of the multi-servicebusiness platform 510, the platform 510 may pull in the knowledge graphs(e.g., knowledge graph(s) 556) and then may expose or may hide differentservices (e.g., features) based on the data that may be stored therein.If properties exist, then they may show up. If associations to othercustom objects and other object types may exist, then those associationsmay be visible within the multi-service business platform 510. Forexample, when going into the listing tool of the multi-service businessplatform 510, a user may create a list. This may function similarly tohow the user may view this function in workflows. It may be visiblethroughout the software such that the multi-service business platform510 may pull in the knowledge graph(s) 556 throughout the platform 510so that the user may then leverage the instance data throughout theplatform 510.

Referring now to example implementations of FIG. 50, there is shown aflow chart including a set of operations of a process 1000 for creatinga custom object according to example embodiments of the disclosure. Inthis example, a user request for a custom object creation includingcustom object information 1002 may be received. The custom objectinformation may be interpreted and converted into custom object metadata1004. The custom object metadata may be inserted and stored into arelational-type database 1006. The custom object metadata may beconverted into language-independent data creating a custom object 1008.The custom object in language-independent data form may be sent to auser device and/or one or more services of a multi-service businessplatform for use with a marketing process, a sales process, and/or acustomer service process 1010. Services may be applied and used withlanguage-independent data of the custom object 1012.

As described in the disclosure, the multi-service business platform 510may include the services 530 (e.g., features) that may be used with andcustomized for interacting with custom objects. As new instances of theservices 530 may be added or instances of the services 530 may bechanged, the multi-service business platform 510 may automatically applythe added and/or changed instances of the services 530 to all customobjects. The multi-service business platform 510 may also automaticallyintegrate use of all custom objects with any new services that are addedto the services 530.

In another example, a user may be from a yoga business. In this example,the user may create the following custom objects that may include studiocustom objects, class custom objects, instructor custom objects, studentcustom objects, and schedule custom objects as described in thedisclosure. The user may use the customization system 520 of themulti-service business platform 510 to create these custom objects. Theuser may also use the other systems and the services 530 of themulti-service business platform 510 for assisting with management oftheir yoga business (e.g., especially use of custom objects of the yogabusiness).

For example, the yoga user may use the workflow automation 532 (e.g.,workflows) to send out a “special” to students who may have not attendeda specific class more than 90 days ago. Using the workflow automation532 (e.g., workflows tool), the user may create a “student” workflow.Enrollment criteria may be that the student may have attended at leastone class and the date the student last attended was more than 90 daysago. An action for this workflow may be to email the contact record(e.g., contact information in properties such as email) associated withthe student a discount for a new package of classes. This workflow maybe updated and kept in sync automatically as students attend classes inreal time and/or periodically as time passes. For example, the user mayuse reporting 534 to find out how many classes students may beattending. Using reporting 534 (e.g., reporting tool), the user maybuild a histogram of student counts by number of classes attended. ACRM-related action 536 may include searching capabilities that may beused with CRM records. The search may be used by the user to create apublic listing of all classes and locations so students may be able toview and access what classes may be available and may sign up to attendonline. A search page may be supported by a CRM search engine of thisCRM-related action 536 (e.g., search) which may support definingwell-formed queries against a data set. For example, a search may be aquery such as “Show me all classes at a specific location that aretaught by instructor X and are held on weeknights”. The user may useimport/export services 540 (e.g., importing and/or exporting propertiesfrom external data source(s) such as external information source(s) tothe multi-service business platform 510). In this example, the user mayspecifically use import service (e.g., import tool). For example, whenthe user (e.g., owner of yoga business) starts using the multi-servicebusiness platform 510, the user may need to import data when creatingcustom objects. After the user defines the custom objects, the user mayleverage the import tool in the CRM to import all of their data (e.g.,yoga business data from external information sources 580) in acomma-separated values (CSV) file form into the multi-service businessplatform 510.

Another action 542 of the services 530 may be a listing service (e.g., alisting tool or a lists tool). The user may use the listing tool tocreate a list of all instructors who need to be re-certified. Using thelisting tool, the user may define a list of all instructors whosecertification may be 90 days from expiring. A manager of the yogabusiness may then connect with any instructors on that list and mayensure that the listed instructors may get re-certified. This list maybe automatically updated and kept in sync in real time and/or updatedperiodically as time passes. Another action 542 or service that may beused by the user may be a public API. For example, as the yoga businessgrows and becomes more sophisticated, the yoga business may want todevelop their own programs that may run in-house that may leverage thedata stored on the multi-service business platform 510. For example, themulti-service business platform 510 (e.g., specifically thecustomization system 520 of the platform 510) may include custom objectAPIs that may allow for the user to read and write object data from acustom object datastore of the multi-tenant data stores 552. Anyservices (e.g., features) of the multi-service business platform 510 mayautomatically take newly written data into account. Another action 542or service that may be used by the user may be permissions (e.g., customobject permission service or system). As the yoga business or companygrows, the yoga company may need to hide sensitive information aboutunits from different agents. By leveraging the custom object permissionservice, the user of the yoga company may effectively partition whatdata specific reps may access and edit. For example, the user (e.g.,yoga company user, which may be an administrator user) may use thispermissions service to hide classes taught by one instructor fromanother instructor.

Another action 542 or service that may be used by the user may beadvanced reporting. For example, the yoga business or company may wantto leverage more sophisticated business intelligence tools. Data in acustom objects data store (e.g., of the multi-tenant data stores 552)may be automatically synced into a platform instance (e.g., platforminstance that may be from a third party hosted and managed database suchas Snowflake™) that may then be used to drive advanced queries andjoins. For example, all the same information may be mirrored and/orcopied into the third party hosted and managed database (e.g., usingthird party service 574 such as Snowflake™) that may be leveraged to doefficient analytic queries. Most of the CRM may be meant to be real timeor near real time as possible so that as users may make changes toproperties of their objects, workflows may be updated, reports may beupdated, lists may be updated, content may be updated, etc. For moreadvanced reporting, where real time may be less important, all that datamay be sent off to the third party hosted and managed database (e.g.,Snowflake™) where users may then perform SQL-style queries into the dataset. Whenever a user may define a new custom object or install anintegration that may bring in custom objects, the user may then leveragethis advanced SQL style query against that data set. With this link tothird party hosted and managed database, the multi-service businessplatform 510 may provide hosted data warehousing solutions for users.Users may then join their data sets that they already have in thirdparty hosted and managed databases with the data of the multi-servicebusiness platform 510 (e.g., storage system 550), which may provide anexpansion of users' data.

Another action 542 or service that may be used by the user may beinternal listing and profile pages. All objects (e.g., specificallycustom objects) may be defined in the custom object data store (e.g., ofthe multi-tenant data stores 552) that may have internal listing pagesand profile pages out of the box. This may make it relatively easy for auser to view and/or have access to all of the instances of the customobject that the user may have created and interact with the relateddata.

In example embodiments, the multi-service business platform 510 mayinclude a reporting system 526 that allows users to create differenttypes of visual reports using various data sources associated with aclient's business. In example embodiments, the reporting system 526 mayallow users to generate visual reports that incorporate data collectedwith respect to core objects and/or custom objects, thereby providingfor multi-dimensional custom reports. The custom event reporting maygenerate reports using disparate data that was collected, derived,generated, and/or otherwise obtained by the various services of themulti-service business platform 510 (e.g., CRM 502, CMS 508, paymentsystem 524, event system 522, and/or the like) based on the commonobject definitions that may be applied across the platform. In someexample embodiments, the custom event reporting may implement orleverage a unified analytics pipeline such that all event reporting maybe based on that pipeline (e.g., utilizing common infrastructure).

The multi-service business platform 510 may include an event system(e.g., event system 522). The event system 522 may be configured tomonitor for and record the occurrence of events. In some exampleembodiments, the event system 522 may be configured to maintain unifiedevents that are tracked across several systems of the multi-servicebusiness platform 510. In some of these example embodiments, eventrecords may track all the different types of events that may occur withrespect to a particular type of object such that the event recordprovides a log of all instances of different types of events thatoccurred with respect to the object. The event system 522 may fit withseveral of the services in this disclosure including reporting aspectsand triggering of workflows and actions as related to default and customobjects.

The multi-service business platform 510 may include instances of customobjects that may be used to perform customer-defined analytics (e.g.,analytics 538) across the CRM system 502 and the CMS 508. Themulti-service business platform 510 may include a common infrastructuresuch that all objects (new, old, core, and custom objects) may betracked via a unified analytics pipeline. The custom analytics may beassociated with CRM/CMS based on custom object definitions that may beprovided by users. The custom analytics may be used with a unifiedanalytics pipeline such that all event reporting may be based on thatpipeline (e.g., utilizing common infrastructure).

The multi-service business platform 510 may generate custom actions thatmay operate on or with respect to instances of the custom objects. Thecustom actions may be part of another system that may reside within themulti-service business platform 510. The multi-service business platform510 may be built on top of the customization system 520 (e.g., customobject data system) and may not be aware of workflows or their customactions. The custom actions may be based on objects being considerednouns and actions being considered verbs such that automation of themulti-service business platform 510 may allow for verbs as actions maybe added easily along with adding nouns as custom objects. Themulti-service business platform 510 may include APIs such that any usermay write their own extensions (e.g., using Lambdas or serverlessfunctions). For example, custom actions may be new types of actions thatmay be implemented due to creation of new custom objects (e.g., newactions tracked based on new custom objects).

The multi-service business platform 510 may provide custom objectfiltering. For example, custom objects may include a set of customproperties that may be used to filter instances of the custom objectsbased on values of the respective custom properties. Examples of customobject filtering may include list segmentation, filtering, and searchingacross custom object types and being able to automate off changes (e.g.,changes in custom objects and/or core objects).

The multi-service business platform 510 may use the machine learningsystem 506 with custom objects. For example, instances of custom objectsmay be used with machine learning system 506 to train machine-learnedmodels that may be used with the user (e.g., related to a user'sbusiness) for all objects (e.g., custom objects and core objects). Inone example, the machine learning system 506 may provide custom objectfiltering for custom objects.

For example, the machine learning system 506 may be used with realestate custom objects such that a user may use the CRM system 502 totrack homes for sale and may have built landing pages in the CMS 508 foreach house that may be for sale. The machine learning system 506 (e.g.,machine learning as a service (MLaaS)) may be used to predictinteresting things. Two examples may be a likelihood that a home maysell and the most likely prices. In each example, the user may requestfor the machine learning system 506 of the multi-service businessplatform 510 to predict the value of these properties on the house andmay use the machine learning system 506 (e.g., MLaaS) to predict otherinsights. The machine learning system 506 may use machine-learningmodels to take into account information about a specific home, data fromother home custom objects in the CRM system 502, and data from objectsassociated with the house (e.g., core objects and/or custom objects),such as the realtor and contacts that may have viewed landing pages forthe homes.

The multi-service business platform 510 may include custom objects thatmay be configured to support a custom application architecture of a userthat may connect with the CRM system 502/CMS 508 of the multi-servicebusiness platform 510. The multi-service business platform 510 may be anarbitrary platform that may act on arbitrary objects to do arbitraryactions and sync to arbitrary systems and may get the benefit of variouscapabilities. In an example, the CMS 508 may be made front end to theCRM system 502 (e.g., under protection of login) such that a user mayview what they need in the CMS 508. The custom application may be anytype of application, e.g., a web application. For example, a yoga studiobusiness may include custom objects such as schedule objects, classobjects, “my calendar” (gigantic web application) that may be built ontop of the CMS 508 and the CRM system 502 such that users may build andpresent CMS-driven apps integrated with the multi-service businessplatform 510.

The multi-service business platform 510 may support a custom applicationarchitecture of a user that may integrate with a payment processingservice (e.g., payment system 524) and may connect with the CRM system502/CMS 508 such that a payment processing service may feed payment datato the CRM system 502 and the CMS 508 of the multi-service businessplatform 510 in real-time. In example embodiments, the payment system524 is configured to establish payment sessions for customers withthird-party payment processors on behalf of clients of the multi-servicebusiness platform 510. The payment processing service may, for example,assist a manufacturing company in creating invoices for its customersand may initiate payment sessions with a third-party payment processorthat allows the customers to pay the amounts indicated in the invoicesdirectly via the third-party payment processor. In this way, themulti-service business platform 510 may not have to request, receive, orsecurely store sensitive payment information from the client'scustomers, while still being involved in the payments' workflows. Usingthis payment processing service, customers may easily go onto a websiteand make a purchase similar to other purchasing sites. The paymentprocessing service may be used with business to business (B2B)transactions, e.g., custom objects for B2B; custom actions for B2B; andtight integration between objects in a B-commerce framework (e.g.,product catalog may be in the CRM, the website may be in the CMS,payments may be immediately reflected in the CRM and deal records,custom objects may be shipping and/or tracking, etc.).

The multi-service business platform 510 may include an attributionreporting tool which may be an extremely powerful tool that may leveragemuch of this disclosure. Attribution reporting may be a measure ofefficacy of effort. For example, a user's business may have websitevisitors that may be reviewing web pages, may be filling out forms, etc.and the user's business may have sales reps making calls. All theseactions by visitors and by members of the business may be measured byhow effective each of these individual touch points was in order to havesome outcomes (e.g., closing deal). Attribution reporting may take allthese different inputs which may be happening in the multi-servicebusiness platform 510 (e.g., the CRM system 502 of the multi-servicebusiness platform 510) and may weight them using different models. Theweighting may be prescriptive or customizable. When prescriptive,weighting may be based on some industry standard attribution models thatmay be built (e.g., W model or a U model or an “all touch” model may beused). These standard attribution models may focus on what may be theweighting percentages that may be attributed to specific touch pointswhich may be the first interaction some customers have with the businessor it may be the way that customers became a contact in CRM (e.g., thesemay be important touch points that users may want to add or increaseweight for). In another example, weighting may use a machine learning(ML) powered model which may take in various actions that may behappening and may try to determine what may actually be the most likelyproperty along the same customer journey (e.g., may use ML model thatmay be indicative of user's business process). Then, the attributionreporting may report on which may be the most valuable touch pointsalong a customer's journey through the process till outcome (e.g.,closing a deal). Custom objects may fit in with attribution reportingsuch that custom objects may be the output of this attribution system.The multi-service business platform 510 may include an attributionengine for providing these functionalities. The attribution engine maybe able to leverage custom objects as the output, which may mean allservices and/or systems described in the disclosure may also beutilized. For example, this attribution reporting may be used alongsideother services such as custom object reporting. There may be workflowsthat may be triggered based on the attribution engine which may be aresult of the fact that custom objects are the way that various data maybe processed on the multi-service business platform 510.

Dedupe—Entity Resolution Systems and Methods

Business entity databases often include entries that are duplicative orat least contain duplicative information about a common entity. Entriesmay be duplicative despite there being variances in entity-relateddetails, such as spelling of a business name, missing contact middleinitial, multiple business email addresses and the like. Existingtechniques for entity resolution including determining entries that aresimilar and that may be duplicates may prove useful for small ormoderately sized entity databases. However, such techniques, such asstring comparison, entity heuristics, and the like consume excessiveamounts of computing resources when attempting to handle large ormassively large entity databases, which are becoming more common.Determining duplicate entries in a set of entities is generally anN-squared problem (e.g., (N*(N−1)/2), meaning that the number ofcomparisons required to determine if any two entries in an entity setare duplicates grows as a square of the count (e.g., N{circumflex over( )}2) of entries. Therefore, the number of comparisons for large entitysets of, for example, 100,000 or more entries is prohibitive (e.g., 5billion). Resolving entities by, for example, detecting and addressingduplicate entries in business entity databases provides great benefitsto a business operation. Determining duplicate or likely duplicateentries applies to databases of various sizes and may be of particularneed in large databases, as the number of likely duplicates tends toincrease with database size. Additionally, publicly available entityinformation that can readily be harvested are continuously becomingavailable through the expansion of use of electronic marketing, sales,advertising, social media posting and the like. Therefore, ensuring thatduplicate newly harvested entities may be identified as well as ensuringthat the newly harvested entities may not be mistakenly deemed to beduplicates of existing entries requires ongoing entity resolutionprocessing (e.g., daily processing in some cases). Therefore, techniquesthat consume moderate computing resources for detecting candidateduplicate entity entries may be beneficial for achieving acceptablelevels of entity database processing for large or very large entitydatabases. Such techniques are described herein and may facilitatereducing the computing resources for fully determining duplicate entriesin a large or very large entity database (e.g., a large database having100,000 entries or more) by at least five orders of magnitude or morerelative to earlier techniques.

Existing approaches for determining duplicates among a set of entityentries may be useful for achieving a high degree of confidence of alikelihood of two entities being duplicates. However, as noted above,the computing resource costs of existing approaches limit existingapproaches to small and moderately sized entity sets (e.g., sets with afew thousand or fewer entries). One such approach involves generatingheuristics for each entry and processing those heuristics to determinelikely duplicate entries. While heuristics are referenced in thisdisclosure as an example existing approach, any other approach thatprovides high-confidence duplicate detection, optionally with both lowfalse negative and low false positive results may be readily used as abasis for determining likely duplicate entries.

In embodiments, techniques for determining a candidate set of likelyduplicate entries may rely, at least initially, on a duplicatedetermination approach to train a set of artificial intelligence entityresolution models (e.g., including entity deduplication models). Whenthese trained models are combined with the further techniques describedherein, determining a candidate set of likely duplicate entries mayreduce the computing resources consumed by existing approaches, therebyenabling, deduplication of massively large entity databases in ascalable manner.

The entity resolution methods and systems of entity deduplicationdescribed herein may include various degrees of technical complexitythat, when applied over time, may achieve a fully synthesized artificialintelligence approach to entity resolution through deduplication.

Referring now to an example implementation, FIG. 45 shows the exampleenvironment 500 including, in embodiments, the multi-service businessplatform 510 having an entity resolution system 566. As shown, theentity resolution system 566 may communicate with various systems,devices, and data sources according to one or more embodiments of thedisclosure.

Referring to FIG. 51, an entity resolution system 5100 (e.g., anartificial intelligence-based entity resolution system) for entityresolution through deduplication is shown. In example embodiments, theentity resolution system 566 may be the entity resolution system 5100.Elements of the entity resolution system 5100 presented in FIG. 51 willbe described in greater detail below. Each entity may be described byand/or include, or reference one or more entity features. For example,in a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, there may be acontact entity. The contact entity may have or be associated with one ormore of the following example entity features: first name, last name,address, email address, age, company name, location, and the like. Inexample embodiments, entity entries (e.g., entity entries 5106) may bereceived. The entry entities 5106 may be stored in the multi-servicebusiness platform 510 (e.g., stored in an entity database of theplatform 510). In example embodiments, the entry entities 5106 may beobjects obtained from the storage system 550. The objects may beCustomer Relationship Management (CRM) objects. In some examples, theobjects may be core objects (e.g., core objects 634) or custom objects(e.g., custom objects 632 that may be defined in the multi-servicebusiness platform 510). Some examples of these objects, as describedherein, may include but may not be limited to a contact object, aprospect object, a marketing object, a services object, a company, aticket (e.g., customer service ticket), a product, a deal, any otherobject or entity associated with activities or relationships of anorganization with its current and prospective customers, and the like.

In example embodiments, the entity resolution system 5100 may include anentity encoding module 5102 that may receive an entity entry, mayextract one or more entity features from the received entity entry, andmay encode each of at least a portion of the one or more entity featuresas a vector (e.g., a multidimensional entity feature vector) suitablefor use by an artificial intelligence system (e.g., a neural networksystem). In example embodiments, the entity features may be objectproperties that may be associated with the core object or custom object.The entity encoding module 5102 may encode the entity features into avectorized representation, for example, text strings, identifiers,numbers, Boolean connectors, and the like of each entity feature (e.g.,each element of the entity feature) of each entity of the entities(e.g., entity entries 5106). In example embodiments, a name feature of afirst entity may be encoded into a first multidimensional feature vectorof the first entity and an address feature of the first entity may beencoded into a second multidimensional feature vector of the firstentity. The entity encoding module 5102 may reference a feature encodingsource 5104, which may include one or more feature encoding schemes. Insome examples, the encoding scheme (e.g., entity feature encodingscheme) may be a text encoding scheme (e.g., Universal Sentence Encoder(USE) type of encoding scheme, FastText word-centric encoding scheme,and the like). The entity encoding module 5102 may select an encodingscheme from the encoding source 5104 and apply the selected encodingscheme (e.g., the USE scheme) to the feature(s) of the entity entries5106. The type of entity encoding scheme used may include encodingschemes that may be based on at least one of text, sentence(s),phrase(s), and/or word(s)). Independent of the type of entity encodingscheme used, a result of the encoding performed by the entity encodingmodule 5102 may be a vector with a value that may be specific to eachentity feature of an entity in the entity entries 5106. While the USEencoding scheme is an exemplarily referenced type of encoding scheme,other vector-encoding schemes or approaches (e.g., other text stringvector-encoding schemes) may be used. In example embodiments, the textencoding scheme (e.g., feature encoding scheme) may not be limited to acommercially available scheme. As an example, the text encoding schememay be produced or generated through use of one or more artificialintelligence approaches. In example embodiments, use of the USE encodingscheme may be instructive for further teaching the methods and systemsof artificial intelligence-based entity resolution through entity dataset entry deduplication described herein. As an example of use of aparticular configuration of the USE encoding scheme, each entity featureprocessed with the particular configuration of the USE encoding schememay result in or produce a 512-element feature vector. Otherconfigurations of the USE encoding scheme may produce feature vectorswith fewer or greater quantity of elements. Other encoding schemesapplied to a given entity feature may result in a different size featurevector. In some examples, the feature vector may be referred to as aname vector (e.g., for a name entity feature), an address vector (e.g.,for an address entity feature), etc. (e.g., where each unique featuremay relate to a different vector).

In example embodiments, the entity encoding module 5102 may provide itsoutput entity feature vector(s) to an encoding reduction module 5108(e.g., that may use a trained neural network and/or trained entitydeduplication model). In example embodiments, the encoding reductionmodule 5108 may be implemented to leverage a neural network (e.g., aSiamese neural network) or a suitable model that may be trained toproduce a reduced entity-specific vector by processing the featurevector(s) associated with a specific entity. In example embodiments, thereduced entity-specific vector produced from the encoding reductionmodule 5108 may be suitable for further processing to generate a numericvalue indicative of a likelihood that the entity that the reducedentity-specific vector represents may be a duplicate of another entitythat is similarly represented by a corresponding reduced entity-specificvector. In other words, the reduced entity-specific vector facilitatesdetermining, for any pair of entities, if the pair of entities maylikely be duplicates. In example embodiments, the further processing mayinclude a matrix processing module 5110 may receive the reducedentity-specific vector(s) output by the encoding reduction module 5108.The matrix processing module 5110 may organize the received reducedentity-specific vectors as an entity feature matrix (e.g.,two-dimensional entity feature matrix, two-dimensional matrix, entitymatrix, entity-specific vector matrix, 2D matrix). In some exampleembodiments, this two-dimensional (2D) entity feature matrix may be astructured list of the reduced entity-specific vectors indexed byentity, such that a reduced entity-specific vector representative of anentity appears on a single row of the 2D entity feature matrix. Thematrix processing module 5110 may produce a transposed version of theentity feature matrix (e.g., transposed 2D entity feature matrix) suchthat rows and columns may be swapped. The matrix processing module 5110may further multiply the entity feature matrix with its transposedversion, such as through a dot-product (e.g., Dp) process, to produce acompanion matrix comprising numeric values indicative of a likelihoodthat each pair of entities represented in the entity feature matrix maybe duplicates. In other words, the companion matrix may hold valuesindicative of a likelihood that all pairwise combinations of entities inthe entity feature matrix are duplicates. Example embodiments of anentity feature matrix and a companion matrix are depicted in FIG. 57that is described in the disclosure. In example embodiments, when allentities in the set of entities 5106 are represented in the entityfeature matrix, the companion matrix may hold a value indicative of alikelihood that all pairwise combinations of entities in the set ofentities 5106 may be duplicates. In example embodiments, the entityresolution system 5100 may include a likely duplicate candidateselection module 5112. The likely duplicate candidate selection module5112 may use the likelihood values from the companion matrix for pairsof entities to select entity pairs (e.g., candidate duplicate entitiesfor a business entity) for further processing. In one example, theselected entity pairs may be a result of a selection of top ten pairs(e.g., top ten pairs having the highest likelihood values). In exampleembodiments, a duplicate determination module 5114 (e.g., may also bereferred to as a duplicate refinement module or a duplicaterefinement/determination module) may produce a set of the selectedentity pairs for further processing. In example embodiments, a duplicateentity resolution module 5116 may process the selected entity pairs(e.g., top ten pairs) with one or more automated entity comparisonalgorithms, human operators, and artificial intelligence systems todetermine which of the selected entity pairs represent one entity andtherefore may be deemed to be duplicate entries (e.g., may also bereferred to as common entities). In example embodiments, two entitiesmay represent one entity (e.g., may represent the same business,contact, product, and the like) when the only difference is a phonenumber feature (e.g., where the one entity may be referred to as acommon entity). Two entities may represent one entity when, for example,an entity name feature, entity address feature, and entity primary phonenumber feature match, independent of any lack of matching of otherfeatures. In yet another example of two entities representing oneentity, an entity name feature (e.g., a business name of the entity) maymatch while an address feature may not match (e.g., a regional hospitalmay have several locations for serving patients).

FIG. 52 shows an example entity dedupe setup/training process 5200according to example embodiments. In an initial phase of the entitydedupe setup/training process 5200, entity deduplication-specificartificial intelligence models may be prepared using machine learning.In example embodiments, entity deduplication artificial intelligencemodels may be trained using a training set of entity data 5202 for whichduplicate status may be known. In other words, a duplicate status ofeach pairwise combination of entities represented in the entity data5202 may be known (e.g., precomputed) so that when any pair of entitiesfrom the training set of entity data 5202 is presented for training, acorresponding duplicate status may be referenced to facilitate entitydeduplication artificial intelligence model training. In exampleembodiments, the training set of entity data 5202 may include one ormore of duplicate entities, near duplicate entities, and/ornon-duplicate entities. Corresponding duplicate status for each pair ofentities may be included in the training set of entity data 5202 and/ormay be stored external to the training set of entity data 5202.

In example embodiments of the training process 5200, each pairwisecombination of entities (e.g., referred herein to as a pair or a pair ofentities or entity pair) in the training set of entity data 5202 may beprocessed through the training process 5200. A merge evaluator 5204 mayreceive a pair of training entities (e.g., pair (A,B)) from the trainingset of entity data 5202 (e.g., entries of training entities that mayrefer to training entities that were entered into the platform) and mayproduce a corresponding duplicate entity indication 5216 (e.g., P(merge)value for (A,B)), referred to herein as Pmerge and/or p-merge, that mayreflect the duplicate entity status for the pair of entities receivedfrom the training set of entity data 5202. For example, the mergeevaluator 5204 may generate a Pmerge value for a pair of trainingentities from the training set of entity data 5202. As described in thedisclosure, this duplicate pair status value may be referred to hereinas a Pmerge value (or a “Pmerge”), which may be a probability ofseamless merging of the two entities (e.g., the two entities beingduplicates). In example embodiments, a duplicate detection approach,such as the use of heuristics or string matching may be used by themerge evaluator 5204 to determine the Pmerge value. The training process5200 may be repeated for each pair of entities in the training set ofentity data 5202. Therefore, for each pair of entities in the trainingset of entity data 5202, the corresponding duplicate entity indication5216 (e.g., Pmerge value) may represent a probability that the pair maybe duplicates. For simplicity, this duplicate entity indication 5216value (e.g., Pmerge value) may be computed to be in a range from about 0to about 1. The probability of the two entities being duplicates maycorrespond to the duplicate entity indication 5216 (e.g., the Pmergevalue). In example embodiments, a Pmerge value of 1 may represent a 100%probability that the two entities may be duplicates, whereas a Pmergevalue of 0 may represent a 0% probability that the two entities may beduplicates. This Pmerge value for a pair of entities (e.g., entryentities) may be used as a label in training an artificial intelligenceentity deduplication model to facilitate determining likely duplicateentries. As an example use of a label, a Pmerge value may be input to amachine learning process as a control against which an accuracy of anentity resolution model (e.g., an entity deduplication model) may bemeasured.

In example embodiments, each entity in the t training set of entity data5202 (e.g., training data set) may include any of multiple values in oneor more features (e.g., first name, last name, address, email address,age, company name, location, and many others). In example embodiments,the entity dedupe setup/training process 5200 may include a trainingentity encoding module 5206 that may be configured and operatecomparably or similarly to the entity encoding module 5102 of FIG. 51.The training entity encoding module 5206 may encode the training set ofentities 5202 (e.g., training entity data) into one or more entityfeature vectors 5208 per entity (e.g., where each entity may be encodedinto entity feature vectors). These encoded entity feature vectors 5208may be stored for each training entity (e.g., training entity entry inthe training set of entity data 5202) in a machine learning trainingencoded entity feature vector data set (e.g., entity feature vector dataset 5208). In example embodiments, a neural network configured forentity resolution may reduce the one or more of entity feature vectorsfor each respective entity to a single N-dimensional entity-specificvector. The methods and systems of entity resolution through entitydeduplication described herein may reduce the processing required toproduce at least a manageable entity duplicate candidate set for largeor massive entity databases. In example embodiments, entitydeduplication may produce an accurate indication of a likelihood of anytwo entities being duplicates. Therefore, the neural network may beconfigured to reduce the number of entity feature-specific vectors foreach entity down to a single entity-specific vector (e.g., single 256element entity-specific vector). This reduction in dimensions mayfacilitate reducing computation requirements since a substantivelysmaller number of dimensions to be processed may achieve a lowercomputation load per entity pair. Generally, models with more nodes maypotentially improve model performance (e.g., ability to reproduce afunction that the model emulates), although that performance may likelyplateau at some point such that further increases in nodes may not beeconomical (e.g., the additional computing costs for a model with acount of nodes that has plateaued may provide insignificant improvementin performance). In example embodiments, processing increases as anumber of nodes in the model increases. In a non-limiting example,doubling a count of nodes in a model may correspond to roughly doublingthe computing effort (e.g., time for a given processor). Also, time totrain the model may increase as a count of nodes in the model increases.Additionally, a required amount of training data may be greater formodels with higher node counts. In example embodiments, a count of nodesof an artificial intelligence model (e.g., artificial intelligenceentity deduplication model) may be set to be a power of 2 (in examples2{circumflex over ( )}8=256) to make computation more efficient. In anon-limiting example of a sample technique for reducing dimensions forentity deduplication, a tower neural network (e.g., Siamese tower neuralnetwork) may be configured with multiple input nodes (e.g., 3,072 inputnodes for reducing six (6) 512 feature-specific vectors). In thisexample, the tower neural network may reduce these 3,072 inputs to asingle entity-specific vector of about 256 output nodes (e.g., a 256element entity-specific vector). The number of entity vectors, size ofeach entity vector, and the resulting entity-specific vector size mayvary from these examples. Therefore, other combinations of inputs andoutput nodes may be contemplated and included herein.

In example embodiments, an overview of a feedback portion of thetraining process 5200 may include retrieving feature vectors for a pairof entities (mathematically represented as pair (A,B)) from the featurevector storage 5208, such as by a machine learning process 210. Thefeature vectors for the pair (A,B) may be processed through anartificial intelligence system 5212. Optionally, the machine learningprocessing 5210 may provide the retrieved feature vectors to theartificial intelligence system 5212. The artificial intelligence system5212 may generate an output duplicate likelihood value 5220 for the pair(A,B). In example embodiments, the artificial intelligence system 5212may employ a dot-product function (e.g., Dp) when producing theduplicate likelihood value 5220. A training error determination module5214 may determine an error value 5218 for the two entities (A,B) byprocessing the duplicate likelihood value 5220 with the duplicate entityindication 5216 (e.g., a precomputed indication of a likelihood that thepair (A,B) are duplicates). This error value may be fed back to themachine learning process 5210 where it may be matched with thecorresponding entity feature vectors for pair (A,B). The machinelearning process 5210 may use the feedback 5218 to train the artificialintelligence system 5212 to produce the duplicate likelihood value 5220that approximates the corresponding duplicate entity indication value5216 (e.g., minimizes the error value 5218). In example embodiments, allpair-wise combinations of entities represented in the feature vectorstorage 5208 may be processed at least one time for training of anartificial intelligence system 5212.

As described in the disclosure, the methods and systems of entityresolution (e.g., of the entity resolution system 5100), such asartificial intelligence-based deduplication may benefit from beingtrained by feedback. In example embodiments, the entity dedupesetup/training process 5200 may include a training error determinationmodule 5214 that may generate error feedback as an error value 5218(e.g., a duplicate entry-pair error value). For example, the trainingerror determination module 5214 may determine the error as the absolutevalue of the difference between a result of the dot product function ofthe artificial intelligence system 5212 and the Pmerge value for thepair (e.g., |Dp−Pmerge|). A machine learning training process 5210 mayreceive the error value 5218 (e.g., from the training errordetermination module 5214) as feedback. In example embodiments, themachine learning training process 5210 may provide machine learning fortraining an artificial intelligence system 5212, optionally comprising aneural network to generate vectors to facilitate entity deduplication.The training process 5200 may include the machine learning trainingprocess 5210 retrieving the one or more feature vectors for a pair ofentities 5222 (e.g., mathematically represented as entity pair (A,B) ofthe entity pairs) from the entity feature vectors 5208. In exampleembodiments, as shown in FIG. 52, the machine learning training process5210 may train an artificial intelligence system 5212 responsive to theentity pair 5222 and the corresponding error value 5218 (e.g., themachine learning training process 5210 may adjust the artificialintelligence system 5212 such as by adjusting weights of a neuralnetwork of the artificial intelligence system 5212, optionally tominimize the corresponding error value 5218). Training of the artificialintelligence system 5212 may include adjusting weights and the like ofan entity deduplication model of the artificial intelligence system,such as an entity deduplication model within a neural network. Inexamples, the artificial intelligence system 5212 may, at least in partthrough use of the entity duplication model, facilitate entityresolution through deduplication of entities (e.g., output the duplicatelikelihood value 5220). The training error determination module 5214 maymathematically compare the duplicate entity indication 5216 (e.g.,Pmerge value) for each entity pair in the training set of entities withthe generated duplicate likelihood value(s) 5220 for each entity in eachtraining set pair from the artificial intelligence system 5212 (e.g.,generates the duplicate likelihood value(s) 5220).). In examples, thegenerated duplicate likelihood value 5220 may be mathematicallyexpressed as Dp for (A,B). In example embodiments, the artificialintelligence system 5212 may employ a vector dimension reducing neuralnetwork to produce a reduced dimension entity-specific vector for eachentity in the pair (A,B) that represents the feature vectors for thecorresponding entity in the pair (A,B). The artificial intelligencesystem 5212 may further include a vector processor that may employ adot-product function (e.g., Dp) to produce a dot-product value as aduplicate likelihood value (e.g., the duplicate likelihood value 5220)for each pair of training reduced dimension entity-specific vectorsgenerated from the training set of entity data 5202. An objective of thetraining may be to produce dot-product pair values (e.g., the duplicatelikelihood value 5220) that approximate the Pmerge value for each entitypair in the training set of entity data 5202. Therefore, as describedfor the example embodiments of FIG. 51, the entity feature vectors maybe generated in such a way that their dot product may be generally avalue in the range of about zero (0) to about one (1). In an example,the training error determination module 5214 may generate the trainingerror value 5218 by taking an absolute value of a difference of theduplicate likelihood value 5220 and the corresponding duplicate entityindication 5216 (e.g., corresponding Pmerge value). The correspondingPmerge value may be for the same pair of training set entries (e.g.,training data set) that were used by the artificial intelligence system5212 to produce the duplicate likelihood value 5220. The machinelearning process 5210 may receive the training error value 5218 asfeedback to be used for adjusting aspects of the artificial intelligencesystem 5212, (e.g., adjusting weights and the like of a neural network).An objective of the feedback process may be to produce entity featurevectors that, when processed through the dot-product function, mayproduce a value that may approximate a corresponding duplicate entityindication 5216 (e.g., Pmerge value) with improved quality. In exampleembodiments, an entity deduplication model may be updated based on amachine learning system applying the training error (e.g., trainingerror value 5218). In embodiments, the entity deduplication model may beupdated to reduce and/or minimize the training error value 5218.

In example embodiments, training of the neural network may proceed by atraining system that may feed or input pairs of training entity vectorsthrough the neural network and may use a portion of the output producedby the neural network, or another value derived from the neural networkoutput as feedback to affect the learning or training of the neuralnetwork. Further, while a Siamese neural network may be used as anexample of a type of neural network suitable for the technologyexpressed herein, a single tower neural network may be used in anotherexample, with each entity being processed sequentially through thesingle tower neural network. Using the single tower neural network mayinvolve adjustments to the overall system in that each entity-specificvector produced may need to be stored for subsequent duplicate detectionprocessing and/or feedback during training. Similarly, a multi-towerapproach or multi-neural network approach (e.g., more than two towers ormore than two neural networks) may be applied with any number ofidentically configured neural networks being used to process thetraining set of entities (e.g., the training set of entity data 5202).In some example embodiments, for a training entity set of N entries(where N may refer to any number entries or any range of numbers ofentries), as many as N neural networks may be used, with each of theneural networks processing a corresponding entry. The quantity and typeof neural network may be determined by factors other than those relevantfor determining duplicate entity entries, such as available computingresources, time available for the training, and the like.

FIG. 53 shows an example set of operations of a method for training anentity deduplication model 5300 according to some example embodiments ofthe disclosure. For example, at 5302, pairs of training entities in atraining set may be processed through an entity duplicate detectionprocess, such as one based on heuristics and the like that may produceand record a probability of an entity duplicate value for each pair(e.g., a Pmerge value). For example, at 5302, the Pmerge value may begenerated for pairs of training entities. At 5304, a text-to-vectorencoding module may generate vector representations of one or morefeatures for the entities in the training set (e.g., entity feature textto vector of one or more features for the entities). A neural network(e.g., a Siamese tower neural network) may be configured, at 5306, toproduce reduced complexity entity-specific vectors that may be suitablefor generating, via dot-product vector processing, a value that may becomparable to the Pmerge value generated at 5302 (e.g., the Siameseneural network may be configured at 5306). At 5308, the neural network(e.g., Siamese neural network) may be used to reduce vector pairs. Forexample, at 5308, pairs of entity feature-specific vectors (e.g., oneset of feature-specific vectors for each entity in the pair of entities)may be processed through the Siamese neural network configured at 5306to produce a pair of reduced complexity entity-specific vectors (e.g.,one entity-specific vector for each entity in the pair of entities). At5310, pairs of reduced vectors may be multiplied. For example, at 5310,the pair of reduced complexity entity-specific vectors produced at 5308may be processed with a dot product function, thereby generating anentity duplicate likelihood value for the pair of entities. At 5312, anerror value may be generated. For example, at 5312, the duplicatelikelihood value may be processed (e.g., compared) with thecorresponding Pmerge value for the entity pair produced at 5302 toproduce an error value. In example embodiments, each error value may beproduced from generating an absolute value of a difference of theduplicate likelihood value and the corresponding Pmerge value. Inexample embodiments, the error value may be one or more of a compoundvalue, a mean value and a range, a standard deviation, a ranking, apercentage of difference, normalized values, an absolute difference anda count of occurrences, a difference from a prior error value, amulti-dimensional vector, and the like. At 5314, error value(s) may beused as feedback to train the neural network (e.g., Siamese neuralnetwork). For example, at 5314, the error value(s) may be returned to amachine learning training system that may facilitate training anartificial intelligence system for entity resolution, including at leastthe neural network being configured at 5306. This process may berepeated for all pairs of entities in the training set of entities andwith varying neural network configurations.

In example embodiments, artificial intelligence methods and systems maybe used to replace, with substantially similar accuracy, an example highcomputing load entity deduplicating scheme. An example flow that usesartificial intelligence as a proxy for a high computation demandprocess, such as text string matching and/or heuristics, may include afront-end text encoder (e.g., Universal Sentence Encoder), a middlestage trained neural network (e.g., a trained Siamese neural network),and a back-end merge indicator function (e.g., dot-product). Thisapproach may process pairs of entities efficiently, one pair at a timeand may further be scaled to handle any quantity of pairs concurrently.Scaling may be accomplished by, for example, replicating portions of thesystem, such as the middle stage trained neural network.

An example system configuration and data flow of this approach are shownin FIG. 54 and FIG. 55. FIG. 54 shows a training system and process forentity deduplication 5400 according to example embodiments. Thistraining system and process may include entity deduplication operationsthat may have a set of entity feature encodings 5402 to be processed fordetermining duplicate entities. The set of entity feature encodings 5402may be grouped into entity feature encoding groups, where an entityfeature encoding group (e.g., feature group) may represent features ofthe entity. In example embodiments, a Siamese twin tower neural network5404 may receive a feature group of entity feature encodings from theset of entity feature encodings 5402 (e.g., feature encodings) for apair of the entities, where one group of feature encodings maycorrespond to one entity per tower (e.g., tower A or tower B in theSiamese neural network 5404). The Siamese neural network 5404 mayproduce a first reduced vector 5406 (e.g., vector A) from tower A (e.g.,of the Siamese neural network 5404) and a second reduced vector 5408(e.g., vector B) from tower B (e.g., of the Siamese neural network5404), representing a reduced complexity vector per entity. In exampleembodiments, a dot product process 5410 (e.g., using a dot productmodule) may process the reduced vectors 5406 and 5408 to obtain a dotproduct 5418 (e.g., Dp) of the reduced complexity vectors. This dotproduct may represent, at least in part, a likelihood that the pair ofentities processed by the Siamese neural network 5404 are duplicates. APmerge lookup module 5414 (e.g., Pmerge lookup module) may retrieve oneor more Pmerge values 5420 (e.g., Pmerge values may be a control for thetraining) from a set of Pmerge values 5412 that may correspond to thepair of entities for which the current reduced vector pair was producedby the Siamese neural network 5404 (e.g., produced by Siamese neuralnetwork towers A and B). The dot product(s) 5418 and Pmerge value(s)5420 may then be processed as described herein (e.g., processed by thetraining error module 5214 in FIG. 52 as described in the disclosure) togenerate an error value 5416 for each pair of training entities (e.g.,dot product error value for use by machine learning). As shown in FIG.54 and described elsewhere herein, the dot product error value may becomputed as an absolute value of a difference between value Dp 5418 andvalue Pmerge 5420 (e.g., resulting in |Dp−Pmerge| or an absolute ofDp−Pmerge). This error value 5416 may be returned to a machine learningtraining system as feedback to improve learning.

FIG. 55 shows a flow that may correspond to the backend merge indicatorprocess 5500 (e.g., entity dedupe for the backend) referenced in thedisclosure according to some example embodiments. A duplicate thresholdfilter 5502 (e.g., likely duplicate threshold filter or duplicateprobability threshold filter) may reference a likelihood of duplicationthreshold value to filter an artificial intelligence system-generateddot-product duplicate probability value 5504 (e.g., AI-derived pairduplicate probability) for each pair of entities. In exampleembodiments, a dot-product duplicate probability value 5504 (e.g., Dp(pair n)) may be comparable to, for example, Dp 5418 of FIG. 54 or asotherwise described herein. The filter 5502 may limit entity pairs forfurther processing to those pairs that may exceed a duplicateprobability/likelihood threshold value (e.g., more likely to beduplicates) and may store the filtered pairs in a subset of likelyduplicate entities 5506 (e.g., a subset of likely duplicate entitiesfrom the set of entities to dedupe). Optionally rather than using anumeric probability threshold, a fixed number of the pairs with thehighest probability value may be passed on for further processing. Inexample embodiments, a final duplicate determination process 5508 (e.g.,final determination of duplicates for each pair of entities in thesubset) may organize and process this subset of likely duplicateentities 5506 by optionally combining computer automated entitycomparison functions and human entity comparison operation(s) todetermine for each pair of likely duplicate entities 5506 if the twoentities in each pair are duplicates. In example embodiments, the finalduplicate determination process 5508 (e.g., embodied as a duplicateentity determination module) may classify each entity of the pair as oneof duplicate of the other entity of the pair or a non-duplicate of theother entity of the pair (e.g., each entity in the pair is classified aseither duplicate or non-duplicate of the other). The backend mergeindicator process 5500 may include a dedupe action at 5510 (e.g.,embodied as a duplicate entity resolution module) in which an action istaken in response to final duplicate determination process 5508. Inexample embodiments, a dedupe action taken at dedupe action at 5510(e.g., and optionally by a duplicate entity resolution module) mayinclude deleting one or more of the pair of duplicate entries, mergingfeatures of the duplicate entries, and the like. The dedupe action takenat 5510 may be performed automatically by a computer processor that hasaccess privileges to a database that includes the duplicate entries. Adedupe action taken at 5510 may include saving the classification into aduplicate entity classification log for later processing, such as by anoperator and the like.

FIG. 56 is a flow chart that shows a set of operations of an exampleprocess for performing artificial intelligence-based entitydeduplication 5600. At 5602, text to vector encoding may occur. Forexample, at 5602, entities may be processed with a text-to-vectorencoding module to produce a set of vectors representing text features(e.g., name, address, and the like) of an entity. At 5604, artificialintelligence vector reduction may occur. For example, at 5604, theresulting entity feature-specific vectors for at least one of theentities may be processed through a trained artificial intelligencesystem to produce a reduced complexity entity-specific vector that maybe suitable for the methods of dot-product-based entity deduplicatingdescribed herein. In example embodiments, the trained artificialintelligence system may include a Siamese neural network that mayprocess sets of vectors for pairs of entities. At 5606, reduced vectorsmay be stored. For example, at 5606, the reduced complexityentity-specific vector(s) may be stored for later optional use. At 5608,pairs of vectors may be multiplied. For example, at 5608, pairs ofreduced complexity entity-specific vectors produced from the neuralnetwork may be processed with a dot product function, thereby producingan entity duplicate likelihood value for the pair of entities. At 5610,entity pairs may be selected, and duplicates may be determined. Forexample, at 5610, based on the value of the entity duplicate likelihoodvalue, the entity pair may be processed with an entity comparison modulethat may use one or more of heuristics, string comparison, and the liketo determine whether the pair of entities may be duplicates. At 5612,the process 5600 records which entities may be duplicates. For example,at 5612, a result (e.g., duplicate or non-duplicate) may be recorded foreach entity pair. Duplicate entities, as determined by the process 5600of FIG. 56 may be addressed by one or more human operators through useof one or more user devices, such as by deleting duplicates, mergingduplicates, and the like (e.g., received as instructed commands fromusers via user devices).

In example embodiments, the computing required for checking combinationsof entity pairs in larger entity data sets may be further simplified.One example approach may include processing, substantially in parallel,all entities in a large entity database to identify a candidate set oflikely duplicate entries. This simplified computing technique orapproach may be enabled by use of the artificial intelligence entityfeature encoding processes and systems described in the disclosure. Asdescribed in the disclosure, a trained neural network may be used togenerate entity-specific vectors that, when processed as pairs through adot-product process, may generate a value indicative of a probability ofthe two entities being duplicates.

FIG. 57 shows examples of one or more entity-specific vector matrices(e.g., entity feature matrix) and a companion matrix. An example of afurther simplification of computation requirements may be to arrange theentity-specific vectors generated from the trained neural network for aset of N entities (e.g., where “N” may refer to any number of entities)to be deduplicated into a first two-dimensional matrix (A) at 5702,wherein each column at 5704 in entity-specific vector matrix A at 5702may represent one element value in the entity-specific vector and eachrow 5706 in entity-specific vector matrix A may represent acorresponding entity. A number of columns in matrix A may correspond toa number of elements/values in the entity-specific vector. In exampleembodiments, for a 256-value entity-specific vector, entity-specificvector matrix A may be constructed with 256 columns; for a 64-valueentity-specific vector, entity-specific vector matrix A may beconstructed with 64 columns. In example embodiments, the entity-specificvector matrix comprises an array of M columns wherein M corresponds tothe number of values in the entity-specific vector and N rows where Ncorresponds to a count of the entities to be deduplicated. In theexample entity-specific vector matrix A at 5702, an entity-specificvector matrix includes five columns (e.g., five elements in eachentity-specific vector) and four rows (e.g., four entities). Thegenerated entity-specific vector value for each entity may be entered inthe cells of a row for the entity in corresponding columns. Theentity-specific vector matrix A may be copied and transposed (e.g.,matrix B at 5708), and the two matrices (e.g., matrix A and the matrixtransposed copy) may be multiplied to produce a duplicate-likelihoodmatrix D at 5710 (e.g., companion matrix) with pair-wise dot-productvalues for each entity pair appearing in the cells. Therefore, cellD(A,B), for example, may hold a value that may be indicative of thelikelihood that entities A and B are duplicates. Likewise, cell D(A,C),for example, may hold a value that may be indicative of entities A and Cbeing duplicates.

The resulting cell values in each of the rows of the duplicatelikelihood matrix D (e.g., companion matrix) may be sorted from highestto lowest value while maintaining reference to the two entities forwhich the duplicate indication value(s) may apply. Independent ofsorting matrix D at 5710, a subset of the values in each rowrepresenting likely duplicates of the entity for which the row may belabeled, such as the top n values (e.g., top ten) or, for example, onlyvalues above a duplicate likelihood threshold and the like may beselected for further processing. In the example companion matrix D at5710, a most likely duplicate of entity A may be entity C due to thecell value at D(A,C) being greater than other entries in row A. Also, inthe example companion matrix D at 5710, the pair of entities that aremost likely to be duplicates are entities C and D due to the cell valueat D(C,D) being higher than any other cell value in the matrix D. at5710. While the companion matrix D at 5710 shows values in all cells, inexample embodiments, values along the diagonal and in cells below thediagonal may be unfilled. Values along the diagonal may represent onlyone entity (e.g., D(A,A) only represents entity A). Values below thediagonal may be duplicates of corresponding cells above the diagonal(e.g., D(B,A) may be a duplicate of D(A,B)).

The further processing may include processing the corresponding pairs ofentities through another type of entity duplication detection function,such as the heuristic or string-matching functions generally describedin the disclosure. In this example further processing, only the selectedsubset of entity pairs may be processed through this other potentiallymore accurate duplicate detection process. As a result, duplicateentries may be automatically found within a relatively large set ofentities with much less computing load than applying this otherduplicate detection process to all pairwise combinations of entities.For example, rather than requiring N-squared computations (where Nrepresents a numerical count of entities) for determining which entitiesmay be duplicate, only those entity pairs that may exhibit a likelihoodof being duplicates, based on for example a value in companion matrix Dat 5710, may be processed with the relatively larger computationdemanding functions. In example embodiments, the further processing mayinclude presenting the selected subset of entity pairs to a user (e.g.,via a user device) who may use various digital and/or visual comparisontools and/or judgment to determine which, if any, of the selected set ofentity pairs may be duplicates.

FIG. 58 shows an example set of operations of a process for performingartificial intelligence-based entity deduplication 5800. At 5802, textto vector encoding may occur. For example, entities may be processedwith a text-to-vector encoding module at 5802. In example embodiments,the text-to-vector encoding at 5802 may be comparable to entity encodingdescribed in the disclosure, such as for the entity encoding module5102, training entity encoding module 5206, entity text to vector at5304, and the like that may produce entity feature-specific vectors. At5804, there may be artificial intelligence vector reduction. Forexample, at 5804, the resulting entity feature-specific vectors may beprocessed through a trained artificial intelligence system to produce areduced complexity entity-specific vector suitable for dot-product-basedentity deduplicating. At 5806, the reduced complexity entity-specificvectors may be arranged in a matrix. For example, at 5806, the reducedcomplexity entity-specific vectors may be arranged in an entity interimmatrix. In example embodiments, the entity interim matrix may betransposed to obtain a transposed matrix. At 5808, the artificialintelligence-based entity deduplication process 5800 may multiply theinterim matrix with the transposed matrix. For example, at 5808, thetransposed matrix and the interim matrix may be multiplied, therebyproducing a matrix comprising an entity duplicate likelihood value foreach pair of entities (e.g., a companion matrix). At 5810, entity pairsmay be selected, and duplicates may be determined. For example, at 5810,the top N duplicate candidates for each entity may be selected andprocessed, as pairs, through an entity comparison module that may useheuristics, string comparison, and the like to determine whether thepairs of entities may be duplicates. At 5812, the artificialintelligence-based entity deduplication process 5800 may record whichentities are duplicates. For example, at 5812, a result (duplicate ornon-duplicate) may be recorded for each entity pair. Duplicate entities,as determined by the artificial intelligence-based entity deduplicationprocess 5800, may be addressed by deleting duplicates, mergingduplicates, and the like.

In example embodiments, an entity resolution system may optionally usefully synthesized artificial intelligence models to reduce a massiveentity database to a manageable candidate set of likely duplicates. Suchan entity resolution system may also perform duplicate entity detectionwith accuracy comparable to existing high computing resource demandtechniques, such as string comparison, heuristics, and the like. Such anentity resolution system may be constructed by using a machinelearning-trained artificial intelligence process for determining whichpairs of a selected subset of entity pairs in a companion matrix are tobe classified as duplicates (e.g., an artificial intelligence-basedbackend deduplication process). This entity resolution system may beconstructed by replacing, at least for production embodiments, the highcomputation backend (e.g., heuristic, string comparison, and the like)process applied, for example in 5812 of the artificialintelligence-based entity deduplication process 5800, with a machinelearning-trained artificial intelligence backend deduplication process.In example embodiments, predetermining which companion matrix entitiesmay be duplicates and which companion matrix entities may benon-duplicates may be used to train a duplicate detection artificialintelligence system that may be used to automatically determine whichentities are to be classified as duplicates.

FIG. 59 shows an example set of operations of a process for performingfully automated entity deduplication process 5900 according to someexample embodiments of the disclosure. At 5902, text to vector encodingthat produces entity feature-specific vectors for entity features mayoccur. For example, at 5902, entities may be processed with atext-to-vector encoding module. At 5904, artificial intelligence vectorreduction may occur. For example, at 5904, the resulting entityfeature-specific vectors may be processed through a trained artificialintelligence system to produce a reduced complexity entity-specificvector suitable for dot-product-based entity deduplication. The process5900 may arrange the reduced complexity entity-specific vectors in amatrix at 5906. For example, the reduced complexity entity-specificvectors may be arranged in a duplicate entity interim matrix at 5906. Inexample embodiments, the entity interim matrix may be transposed toobtain a transposed matrix. At 5908, the process 5900 may multiply theinterim matrix with the transposed matrix. For example, at 5908, thetransposed matrix and the interim matrix may be multiplied, therebyproducing a matrix comprising an entity duplicate likelihood value foreach pair of entities (e.g., a companion matrix, such as companionmatrix D at 5710). At 5910, artificial intelligence may determineduplicates from candidates. For example, at 5910, the top N duplicatecandidates (those most likely to be a duplicate) for each entity may beselected and processed, as pairs, through the duplicate detectionartificial intelligence system. At 5912, the process 5900 may recordwhich entities may be duplicates. For example, at 5912, the duplicatedetection artificial intelligence system may determine, for each entitypair, if they are duplicates or not (e.g., non-duplicates) and mayrecord the information. Duplicate entities, as determined by the process5900, may be addressed by performing one or more actions, such as bydeleting duplicates, merging duplicates, and the like.

Referring back to FIG. 45, in example embodiments, the multi-servicebusiness platform 510 may include an event system 522 that may beconfigured to monitor for and record the occurrence of events. Inexample embodiments, the multi-service business platform 510 may includea payment system 524 that processes payments on behalf of clients of themulti-service business platform 510. In example embodiments, themulti-service business platform 510 may include a reporting system 526that may allow users to create different types of reports using variousdata sources associated with a client's business (e.g., including datasources corresponding to custom objects defined with respect to theclient's business and/or any core objects that are maintained withrespect to the client's business). In example embodiments, themulti-service business platform 510 may include a conversationintelligence (CI) system 528 that may be configured to process recordedconversations (e.g., video calls, audio calls, chat transcripts, and/orthe like). In example embodiments, the multi-service business platform510 may include a workflow system 562 that may relate to controlling,configuring, and/or executing of workflows in the platform 510. Inexample embodiments, the workflow system 562 may include a customworkflow actions system 564 that may communicate with various systems,devices, and data sources according to one or more embodiments of thedisclosure. The custom workflow actions system 564 may provide userswith the ability to create custom workflow actions (e.g., custom codeactions).

Having thus described several aspects and embodiments of the technologyof this application, it is to be appreciated that various alterations,modifications, and improvements will readily occur to those of ordinaryskill in the art. Such alterations, modifications, and improvements areintended to be within the spirit and scope of the technology describedin the application. For example, those of ordinary skill in the art willreadily envision a variety of other means and/or structures forperforming the function and/or obtaining the results and/or one or moreof the advantages described herein, and each of such variations and/ormodifications is deemed to be within the scope of the embodimentsdescribed herein.

Those skilled in the art will recognize or be able to ascertain using nomore than routine experimentation, many equivalents to the specificembodiments described herein. It is, therefore, to be understood thatthe foregoing embodiments are presented by way of example only and that,within the scope of the appended claims and equivalents thereto,inventive embodiments may be practiced otherwise than as specificallydescribed. In addition, any combination of two or more features,systems, articles, materials, kits, and/or methods described herein, ifsuch features, systems, articles, materials, kits, and/or methods arenot mutually inconsistent, is included within the scope of thedisclosure.

The above-described embodiments may be implemented in any of numerousways. One or more aspects and embodiments of the present applicationinvolving the performance of processes or methods may utilize programinstructions executable by a device (e.g., a computer, a processor, orother device) to perform, or control performance of, the processes ormethods.

As used herein, the term system may define any combination of one ormore computing devices, processors, modules, software, firmware, orcircuits that operate either independently or in a distributed manner toperform one or more functions. A system may include one or moresubsystems.

In this respect, various inventive concepts may be embodied as acomputer readable storage medium (or multiple computer readable storagemedia) (e.g., a computer memory, one or more floppy discs, compactdiscs, optical discs, magnetic tapes, flash memories, circuitconfigurations in Field Programmable Gate Arrays or other semiconductordevices, or other tangible computer storage medium) encoded with one ormore programs that, when executed on one or more computers or otherprocessors, perform methods that implement one or more of the variousembodiments described in the disclosure.

The computer readable medium or media may be transportable, such thatthe program or programs stored thereon may be loaded onto one or moredifferent computers or other processors to implement various ones of theaspects described in the disclosure. In some embodiments, computerreadable media may be non-transitory media.

The terms “program” or “software” are used herein in a generic sense torefer to any type of computer code or set of computer-executableinstructions that may be employed to program a computer or otherprocessor to implement various aspects as described in the disclosure.Additionally, it should be appreciated that according to one aspect, oneor more computer programs that when executed perform methods of thepresent application need not reside on a single computer or processor,but may be distributed in a modular fashion among a number of differentcomputers or processors to implement various aspects of the presentapplication.

Computer-executable instructions may be in many forms, such as programmodules, executed by one or more computers or other devices. Generally,program modules include routines, programs, objects, components, datastructures, etc. that performs particular tasks or implement particularabstract data types. Typically, the functionality of the program modulesmay be combined or distributed as desired in various embodiments.

Also, data structures may be stored in computer-readable media in anysuitable form. For simplicity of illustration, data structures may beshown to have fields that are related through location in the datastructure. Such relationships may likewise be achieved by assigningstorage for the fields with locations in a computer-readable medium thatconvey relationship between the fields. However, any suitable mechanismmay be used to establish a relationship between information in fields ofa data structure, including through the use of pointers, tags or othermechanisms that establish relationship between data elements.

Also, as described, some aspects may be embodied as one or more methods.The acts performed as part of the method may be ordered in any suitableway. Accordingly, embodiments may be constructed in which acts areperformed in an order different than illustrated, which may includeperforming some acts simultaneously, even though shown as sequentialacts in illustrative embodiments.

The disclosure should therefore not be considered limited to theparticular embodiments described in the disclosure. Variousmodifications, equivalent processes, as well as numerous structures towhich the disclosure may be applicable, will be readily apparent tothose skilled in the art to which the disclosure is directed upon reviewof the disclosure.

Detailed embodiments of the disclosure are disclosed herein; however, itis to be understood that the disclosed embodiments are merely exemplaryof the disclosure, which may be embodied in various forms. Therefore,specific structural and functional details disclosed herein are not tobe interpreted as limiting, but merely as a basis for the claims and asa representative basis for teaching one skilled in the art to variouslyemploy the disclosure in virtually any appropriately detailed structure.

The terms “a” or “an,” as used herein, are defined as one or more thanone. The term “another,” as used herein, is defined as at least a secondor more. The terms “including” and/or “having”, as used herein, aredefined as comprising (i.e., open transition).

While only a few embodiments of the disclosure have been shown anddescribed, it will be obvious to those skilled in the art that manychanges and modifications may be made thereunto without departing fromthe spirit and scope of the disclosure as described in the followingclaims. All patent applications and patents, both foreign and domestic,and all other publications referenced herein are incorporated herein intheir entireties to the full extent permitted by law.

The methods and systems described herein may be deployed in part or inwhole through a machine that executes computer software, program codes,and/or instructions on a processor. The disclosure may be implemented asa method on the machine, as a system or apparatus as part of or inrelation to the machine, or as a computer program product embodied in acomputer readable medium executing on one or more of the machines. Inembodiments, the processor may be part of a server, cloud server,client, network infrastructure, mobile computing platform, stationarycomputing platform, or other computing platform. A processor may be anykind of computational or processing device capable of executing programinstructions, codes, binary instructions and the like. The processor maybe or may include a signal processor, digital processor, embeddedprocessor, microprocessor or any variant such as a co-processor (mathco-processor, graphic co-processor, communication co-processor and thelike) and the like that may directly or indirectly facilitate executionof program code or program instructions stored thereon. In addition, theprocessor may enable execution of multiple programs, threads, and codes.The threads may be executed simultaneously to enhance the performance ofthe processor and to facilitate simultaneous operations of theapplication. By way of implementation, methods, program codes, programinstructions and the like described herein may be implemented in one ormore thread. The thread may spawn other threads that may have assignedpriorities associated with them; the processor may execute these threadsbased on priority or any other order based on instructions provided inthe program code. The processor, or any machine utilizing one, mayinclude non-transitory memory that stores methods, codes, instructionsand programs as described herein and elsewhere. The processor may accessa non-transitory storage medium through an interface that may storemethods, codes, and instructions as described herein and elsewhere. Thestorage medium associated with the processor for storing methods,programs, codes, program instructions or other type of instructionscapable of being executed by the computing or processing device mayinclude but may not be limited to one or more of a CD-ROM, DVD, memory,hard disk, flash drive, RAM, ROM, cache and the like.

A processor may include one or more cores that may enhance speed andperformance of a multiprocessor. In embodiments, the process may be adual core processor, quad core processors, other chip-levelmultiprocessor and the like that combine two or more independent cores(called a die).

The methods and systems described herein may be deployed in part or inwhole through a machine that executes computer software on a server,client, firewall, gateway, hub, router, or other such computer and/ornetworking hardware. The software program may be associated with aserver that may include a file server, print server, domain server,internet server, intranet server, cloud server, and other variants suchas secondary server, host server, distributed server and the like. Theserver may include one or more of memories, processors, computerreadable media, storage media, ports (physical and virtual),communication devices, and interfaces capable of accessing otherservers, clients, machines, and devices through a wired or a wirelessmedium, and the like. The methods, programs, or codes as describedherein and elsewhere may be executed by the server. In addition, otherdevices required for execution of methods as described in thisapplication may be considered as a part of the infrastructure associatedwith the server.

The server may provide an interface to other devices including, withoutlimitation, clients, other servers, printers, database servers, printservers, file servers, communication servers, distributed servers,social networks, and the like. Additionally, this coupling and/orconnection may facilitate remote execution of program across thenetwork. The networking of some or all of these devices may facilitateparallel processing of a program or method at one or more locationwithout deviating from the scope of the disclosure. In addition, any ofthe devices attached to the server through an interface may include atleast one storage medium capable of storing methods, programs, codeand/or instructions. A central repository may provide programinstructions to be executed on different devices. In thisimplementation, the remote repository may act as a storage medium forprogram code, instructions, and programs.

The software program may be associated with a client that may include afile client, print client, domain client, internet client, intranetclient and other variants such as secondary client, host client,distributed client and the like. The client may include one or more ofmemories, processors, computer readable media, storage media, ports(physical and virtual), communication devices, and interfaces capable ofaccessing other clients, servers, machines, and devices through a wiredor a wireless medium, and the like. The methods, programs, or codes asdescribed herein and elsewhere may be executed by the client. Inaddition, other devices required for execution of methods as describedin this application may be considered as a part of the infrastructureassociated with the client.

The client may provide an interface to other devices including, withoutlimitation, servers, other clients, printers, database servers, printservers, file servers, communication servers, distributed servers andthe like. Additionally, this coupling and/or connection may facilitateremote execution of program across the network. The networking of someor all of these devices may facilitate parallel processing of a programor method at one or more location without deviating from the scope ofthe disclosure. In addition, any of the devices attached to the clientthrough an interface may include at least one storage medium capable ofstoring methods, programs, applications, code and/or instructions. Acentral repository may provide program instructions to be executed ondifferent devices. In this implementation, the remote repository may actas a storage medium for program code, instructions, and programs.

The methods and systems described herein may be deployed in part or inwhole through network infrastructures. The network infrastructure mayinclude elements such as computing devices, servers, routers, hubs,firewalls, clients, personal computers, communication devices, routingdevices and other active and passive devices, modules and/or componentsas known in the art. The computing and/or non-computing device(s)associated with the network infrastructure may include, apart from othercomponents, a storage medium such as flash memory, buffer, stack, RAM,ROM and the like. The processes, methods, program codes, instructionsdescribed herein and elsewhere may be executed by one or more of thenetwork infrastructural elements. The methods and systems describedherein may be adapted for use with any kind of private, community, orhybrid cloud computing network or cloud computing environment, includingthose which involve features of software as a service (SaaS), platformas a service (PaaS), and/or infrastructure as a service (IaaS).

The methods, program codes, and instructions described herein andelsewhere may be implemented on or through mobile devices. The mobiledevices may include navigation devices, cell phones, mobile phones,mobile personal digital assistants, laptops, palmtops, netbooks, pagers,electronic books readers, music players and the like. These devices mayinclude, apart from other components, a storage medium such as a flashmemory, buffer, RAM, ROM and one or more computing devices. Thecomputing devices associated with mobile devices may be enabled toexecute program codes, methods, and instructions stored thereon.Alternatively, the mobile devices may be configured to executeinstructions in collaboration with other devices. The mobile devices maycommunicate with base stations interfaced with servers and configured toexecute program codes. The mobile devices may communicate on apeer-to-peer network, mesh network, or other communications network. Theprogram code may be stored on the storage medium associated with theserver and executed by a computing device embedded within the server.The base station may include a computing device and a storage medium.The storage device may store program codes and instructions executed bythe computing devices associated with the base station.

The computer software, program codes, and/or instructions may be storedand/or accessed on machine readable media that may include: computercomponents, devices, and recording media that retain digital data usedfor computing for some interval of time; semiconductor storage known asrandom access memory (RAM); mass storage typically for more permanentstorage, such as optical discs, forms of magnetic storage like harddisks, tapes, drums, cards and other types; processor registers, cachememory, volatile memory, non-volatile memory; optical storage such asCD, DVD; removable media such as flash memory (e.g., USB sticks orkeys), floppy disks, magnetic tape, paper tape, punch cards, standaloneRAM disks, Zip drives, removable mass storage, off-line, and the like;other computer memory such as dynamic memory, static memory, read/writestorage, mutable storage, read only, random access, sequential access,location addressable, file addressable, content addressable, networkattached storage, storage area network, bar codes, magnetic ink, and thelike.

The methods and systems described herein may transform physical and/orintangible items from one state to another. The methods and systemsdescribed herein may also transform data representing physical and/orintangible items from one state to another.

The elements described and depicted herein, including in flowcharts andblock diagrams throughout the figures, imply logical boundaries betweenthe elements. However, according to software or hardware engineeringpractices, the depicted elements and the functions thereof may beimplemented on machines through computer executable media having aprocessor capable of executing program instructions stored thereon as amonolithic software structure, as standalone software modules, or asmodules that employ external routines, code, services, and so forth, orany combination of these, and all such implementations may be within thescope of the disclosure. Examples of such machines may include, but maynot be limited to, personal digital assistants, laptops, personalcomputers, mobile phones, other handheld computing devices, medicalequipment, wired or wireless communication devices, transducers, chips,calculators, satellites, tablet PCs, electronic books, gadgets,electronic devices, devices having artificial intelligence, computingdevices, networking equipment, servers, routers and the like.Furthermore, the elements depicted in the flowchart and block diagramsor any other logical component may be implemented on a machine capableof executing program instructions. Thus, while the foregoing drawingsand descriptions set forth functional aspects of the disclosed systems,no particular arrangement of software for implementing these functionalaspects should be inferred from these descriptions unless explicitlystated or otherwise clear from the context. Similarly, it will beappreciated that the various steps identified and described in thedisclosure may be varied, and that the order of steps may be adapted toparticular applications of the techniques disclosed herein. All suchvariations and modifications are intended to fall within the scope ofthis disclosure. As such, the depiction and/or description of an orderfor various steps should not be understood to require a particular orderof execution for those steps, unless required by a particularapplication, or explicitly stated or otherwise clear from the context.

The methods and/or processes described in the disclosure, and stepsassociated therewith, may be realized in hardware, software or anycombination of hardware and software suitable for a particularapplication. The hardware may include a general-purpose computer and/ordedicated computing device or specific computing device or particularaspect or component of a specific computing device. The processes may berealized in one or more microprocessors, microcontrollers, embeddedmicrocontrollers, programmable digital signal processors or otherprogrammable device, along with internal and/or external memory. Theprocesses may also, or instead, be embodied in an application specificintegrated circuit, a programmable gate array, programmable array logic,or any other device or combination of devices that may be configured toprocess electronic signals. It will further be appreciated that one ormore of the processes may be realized as a computer executable codecapable of being executed on a machine-readable medium.

The computer executable code may be created using a structuredprogramming language such as C, an object oriented programming languagesuch as C++, or any other high-level or low-level programming language(including assembly languages, hardware description languages, anddatabase programming languages and technologies) that may be stored,compiled or interpreted to run on one of the above devices, as well asheterogeneous combinations of processors, processor architectures, orcombinations of different hardware and software, or any other machinecapable of executing program instructions.

Thus, in one aspect, methods described in the disclosure andcombinations thereof may be embodied in computer executable code that,when executing on one or more computing devices, performs the stepsthereof. In another aspect, the methods may be embodied in systems thatperform the steps thereof, and may be distributed across devices in anumber of ways, or all of the functionality may be integrated into adedicated, standalone device or other hardware. In another aspect, themeans for performing the steps associated with the processes describedin the disclosure may include any of the hardware and/or softwaredescribed in the disclosure. All such permutations and combinations areintended to fall within the scope of the disclosure.

While the disclosure has been disclosed in connection with the preferredembodiments shown and described in detail, various modifications andimprovements thereon will become readily apparent to those skilled inthe art. Accordingly, the spirit and scope of the disclosure is not tobe limited by the foregoing examples, but is to be understood in thebroadest sense allowable by law.

The use of the terms “a” and “an” and “the” and similar referents in thecontext of describing the disclosure (especially in the context of thefollowing claims) is to be construed to cover both the singular and theplural, unless otherwise indicated herein or clearly contradicted bycontext. The terms “comprising,” “having,” “including,” and “containing”are to be construed as open-ended terms (i.e., meaning “including, butnot limited to,”) unless otherwise noted. Recitation of ranges of valuesherein are merely intended to serve as a shorthand method of referringindividually to each separate value falling within the range, unlessotherwise indicated herein, and each separate value is incorporated intothe specification as if it were individually recited herein. All methodsdescribed herein can be performed in any suitable order unless otherwiseindicated herein or otherwise clearly contradicted by context. The useof any and all examples, or exemplary language (e.g., “such as”)provided herein, is intended merely to better illuminate the disclosureand does not pose a limitation on the scope of the disclosure unlessotherwise claimed. No language in the specification should be construedas indicating any non-claimed element as essential to the practice ofthe disclosure.

While the foregoing written description enables one of ordinary skill tomake and use what is considered presently to be the best mode thereof,those of ordinary skill will understand and appreciate the existence ofvariations, combinations, and equivalents of the specific embodiment,method, and examples herein. The disclosure should therefore not belimited by the above described embodiment, method, and examples, but byall embodiments and methods within the scope and spirit of thedisclosure.

Any element in a claim that does not explicitly state “means for”performing a specified function, or “step for” performing a specifiedfunction, is not to be interpreted as a “means” or “step” clause asspecified in 35 U.S.C. § 112(f). In particular, any use of “step of” inthe claims is not intended to invoke the provision of 35 U.S.C. §112(f).

Persons of ordinary skill in the art may appreciate that numerous designconfigurations may be possible to enjoy the functional benefits of theinventive systems. Thus, given the wide variety of configurations andarrangements of embodiments of the disclosure, the scope of thedisclosure is reflected by the breadth of the claims below rather thannarrowed by the embodiments described in the disclosure.

What is claimed is:
 1. A computing system for using one or more customobjects with other objects on a platform, comprising: a custom objecthaving a primary key configured to locate one or more of the otherobjects, wherein the primary key is at least partially involved indefining a relationship of the custom object to the one or more otherobjects; an association for the custom object with another second objectbased on custom object information received from a user defining arelationship of the custom object with the second object, wherein theassociation includes a first object identification and a second objectidentification; and the second object having a second primary key atleast partially involved in defining the relationship of the secondobject with the custom object via the association; wherein the primarykey is directed to the first object identification or the second objectidentification is directed to the primary key based on the definedrelationship of the second object to the custom object, and wherein thesecond primary key is directed to the first object identification or thesecond object identification is directed to the second primary key basedon the defined relationship of the second object to the custom object;and wherein the custom object, the association, and the second objectare used with at least one of a marketing process, a sales process, or acustomer service process.
 2. The system of claim 1, wherein the customobject includes an object name, an object type, and one or more objectproperties.
 3. The system of claim 2, wherein the one or more objectproperties are submitted by a user via prompts into a machine learningmodel, and wherein the machine learning model is configured to determineadditional object properties from instances of the custom object.
 4. Thesystem of claim 1, wherein the primary key includes at least one of aportal identification, an object type identification, or an objectidentification that assists with locating the one or more other objects.5. The system of claim 1, wherein the association includes at least oneof an association identification, an association type, or a timestamp.6. The system of claim 1, wherein the second object is at least one ofanother custom object or a core object.
 7. The system of claim 1,wherein the association is defined in a direction between the secondobject and the custom object, wherein an inverse association isautomatically generated for an opposite direction between the secondobject and the custom object with respect to the association, andwhereby at least two associations are created for each pair ofassociated objects.
 8. The system of claim 1, wherein the association isdefined in terms of a hierarchy between the custom object and the secondobject based on at least one of identification numbers, object tables,property values associated with the identification numbers, or objectinformation.
 9. The system of claim 1, further comprising one or moremulti-tenant data stores for storing at least a portion of custom objectdata of the custom object, association data of the association, andsecond object data of the second object which is segmented such that oneor more services is executed across any instances of the custom object,the association, and the second object data.
 10. The system of claim 9,wherein the one or more services include at least one of workflowautomation, reporting, customer relationship management (CRM)-relatedactions, analytics, or import/export actions.
 11. The system of claim 1,further comprising a customization system for receiving a user requestto create the custom object, wherein the customization system isconfigured to interpret and convert the custom object information intocustom object metadata, wherein the customization system is configuredto convert the custom object metadata into language-independent datacreating the custom object, and wherein the customization system isconfigured to send the custom object in language-independent data formto, at least one of a user device or one or more services of amulti-service business platform, for use with the at least one of themarketing process, the sales process, or the customer service process.12. The system of claim 1, wherein the custom object, the second object,and the association are part of an ontology that includes at least oneof one or more other custom objects or one or more core objects, andwherein the ontology further includes one or more associations betweenthe custom object and the at least one of the one or more other customobjects or the one or more core objects.
 13. The system of claim 1,further comprising an instance knowledge graph including an instance ofthe custom object and an instance of the second object, wherein theinstance knowledge graph further includes an association instance of theassociation between the custom object instance and the second objectinstance.
 14. A computer-implemented method for using one or more customobjects with other objects on a platform, the method comprising:generating a custom object that uses a primary key to locate one or moreof the other objects, wherein the primary key is at least partiallyinvolved in defining a relationship of the custom object to the one ormore other objects; generating an association for the custom object withanother second object based on custom object information received from auser defining a relationship of the custom object with the secondobject, wherein the association includes a first object identificationand a second object identification; generating the second object havinga second primary key at least partially involved in defining therelationship of the second object with the custom object via theassociation; and using the custom object, the association, and thesecond object with at least one of a marketing process, a sales process,or a customer service process; wherein the primary key is directed tothe first object identification or the second object identification isdirected to the primary key based on the defined relationship of thesecond object to the custom object, and wherein the second primary keyis directed to the first object identification or the second objectidentification is directed to the second primary key based on thedefined relationship of the second object to the custom object.
 15. Themethod of claim 14, wherein the second object is at least one of anothercustom object or a core object.
 16. The method of claim 14, furthercomprising: defining the association in a direction between the secondobject and the custom object; and automatically generating an inverseassociation for an opposite direction between the second object and thecustom object with respect to the association; whereby at least twoassociations are created for each pair of associated objects.
 17. Themethod of claim 14, further comprising: receiving a user request for acustom object creation including the custom object information;interpreting and converting the custom object information into customobject metadata; converting the custom object metadata intolanguage-independent data creating the custom object; and sending thecustom object in language-independent data form to, at least one of auser device or one or more services of a multi-service businessplatform, for use with at least one of a marketing process, a salesprocess, or a customer service process.
 18. The method of claim 17,wherein the one or more services include at least one of workflowautomation, reporting, customer relationship management (CRM)-relatedactions, analytics, or import/export actions.
 19. The method of claim14, further comprising: submitting one or more object properties of thecustom object by a user via prompts into a machine learning model; andthe machine learning model determining additional object properties frominstances of the custom object.
 20. The method of claim 14, wherein theat least one of the marketing process, the sales process, or thecustomer service process includes services providing at least one ofcustomer relationship management, social media marketing, contentmanagement, lead generation, web analytics, search engine optimization,chat, or customer support.
 21. A non-transitory computer readablestorage medium having a plurality of instructions stored thereon which,when executed across one or more processors, causes at least a portionof the one or more processors to perform operations comprising:generating a custom object that uses a primary key to locate one or moreother objects, wherein the primary key is at least partially involved indefining a relationship of the custom object to the one or more otherobjects; generating an association for the custom object with anothersecond object based on custom object information received from a userdefining a relationship of the custom object with the second object,wherein the association includes a first object identification and asecond object identification; generating the second object having asecond primary key at least partially involved in defining therelationship of the second object with the custom object via theassociation; and using the custom object, the association, and thesecond object with at least one of a marketing process, a sales process,or a customer service process; wherein the primary key is directed tothe first object identification or the second object identification isdirected to the primary key based on the defined relationship of thesecond object to the custom object, and wherein the second primary keyis directed to the first object identification or the second objectidentification is directed to the second primary key based on thedefined relationship of the second object to the custom object.
 22. Thecomputer readable storage medium of claim 21, wherein the second objectis at least one of another custom object or a core object.